14616: Hermantin: Miami-Herald-U.S. team pessimistic after Haiti visit (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Miami Herald

Posted Posted on Mon, Jan. 27, 2003

U.S. team pessimistic after Haiti visit
Lawmakers from state in group urging Aristide toward reforms
BY MARIKA LYNCH
mlynch@herald.com

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- A bipartisan congressional delegation -- including two
Florida lawmakers -- raised serious concerns with President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide on Sunday about Haiti's future. They left the country with little
hope that the leader will make reforms.

''I want to be cautiously optimistic, but underlying that is a pessimism --
I'm not getting my hopes up,'' said Florida Sen. Bill Nelson. He made the
three-day trip with fellow Democrat Rep. Kendrick Meek, of Miami, and
Republican Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois, and Mike DeWine of Ohio.

At an hourlong breakfast at Aristide's private home, the lawmakers asked the
Haitian president to crack down on the drug trade and remove police officers
known to be involved in it.

The delegation also told Aristide it was unacceptable that leaders of
political gangs, who have incited violent street protests, are received in
the National Palace. They also urged Aristide to reach out to opposition
leaders to solve the nation's nearly 3-year-old political stalemate and call
legislative elections.

BLUNT TALK

The conversation was frank, lawmakers said, and Aristide pledged to make
reforms. But, Durbin said, the Haitian president needs to take more
responsibility.

''He puts all the blame on the opposition and on the United States,'' Durbin
said. Until the president takes action on key problems, ``it will be a very
difficult situation.''

After a two-day visit during which they visited the seaside slum of Cité
Soleil three times -- a neighborhood so dangerous that U.S. Embassy workers
are barred from entering -- the congressmen also agreed that the United
States needs to send more money to nonprofit groups in Haiti to relieve
poverty.

The aid budget five years ago was more than $100 million. Last year it was
$57 million.

Aristide is facing his most serious political crisis since he was ousted
from office by a coup d'état in 1991. The economy is sliding, and street
protests and strikes have become regular events, which observers say is a
sign the president is losing support even among the poor, his core backers.

Aristide has pledged to call new legislative elections to resolve the
impasse, but says he's been stalled because opposition leaders refuse to
participate -- a strategy he says is meant to prolong the crisis and weaken
his ability to govern.

The president also blames most of his problems on the lack of international
aid to his government.

After the troubled legislative elections, the international community cut
off aid -- including freezing more than $145 million in loans for roads and
health projects.

After meeting with the lawmakers, Aristide said he was working to reach out
to the opposition and to make reforms such as disarming the violent
political gangs, promises he made to the Organization of American States
last summer. On Sunday he urged patience.

`LEARNING DEMOCRACY'

''It was only in 1990 that the first democratic elections took place in
Haiti,'' Aristide said. ``We are in the process of learning democracy in
Haiti.''

The two Florida lawmakers on the trip originally made the voyage because
they said they wanted to highlight the Bush administration's controversial
policy of detaining Haitians who illegally reach the United States while
applying for asylum.

Nelson and Meek want to change the policy. But while in Haiti, the two
lawmakers focused on one of the root causes of emigration: poverty.

During the visit, they visited a factory to promote a U.S. trade bill that
would revive the country's manufacturing industry and provide jobs.

Sen. DeWine took the lawmakers to a free medical clinic in Cité Soleil and a
village in Haiti's central plateau that offers schooling to hundreds of
families.

Meek on Sunday stood in the home of Janine Fils-Aime, a widow, who lives in
a shack. At night, she stacks up concrete cinder blocks to make a bed.
Throughout the weekend, Meek recounted what he saw in phone calls back to
Miami, and stunned his wife into silence.

''It's just saddening my heart. It can't help but move you emotionally,''
Meek said. He wants to set up a congressional bipartisan study group to seek
ways to alleviate poverty in the nation of eight million.










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