18434: Esser: Diplomatic options "before moving to a higher level" (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com


The Baltimore Sun
U.S. keeping wary eye on Haitian unrest

Officials criticize Aristide amid poverty, rebellion, threat of refugee exodus

By Mark Matthews

Sun National Staff

Originally published February 11, 2004

WASHINGTON - If it weren't for Iraq, official attention in Washington
would probably be fixed on the Caribbean nation of Haiti, where a
spreading insurrection against the government and persistent poverty
threaten to cause a new exodus of "boat people" bound for Florida on
leaky vessels.

Nine years after the United States disbanded a military junta and led
an international force to restore democracy in Haiti, the
hemisphere's second-oldest republic is in the grip of an armed
uprising that has seized as many as 11 cities and left dozens of
people dead.

This time, the United States is focusing much of its criticism on the
man it restored to the presidency in 1994: Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
the former priest who once mobilized Haiti's poorest citizens against
dictatorship and the nation's wealthy elite.

Yesterday, the Bush administration stopped just short of calling on
the president to give up power, although one official said that
getting Aristide to step down voluntarily is no more than "a fantasy."

"We recognize that reaching a political settlement will require some
fairly thorough changes in the way Haiti is governed," State
Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.

Speaking on condition he not be named, a senior official was more
blunt: "When we talk about undergoing change in the way Haiti is
governed, I think that could indeed involve changes in Aristide's
position."

Meanwhile, U.S. officials are keeping track of thousands of Americans
in Haiti and watching warily for evidence of boat-building, a clear
sign that the United States could be in for a revival of the mass
immigration that occurred several times during the 1990s and at one
point prompted the Clinton administration to set up a refugee camp at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Another State Department official said the Bush administration has a
contingency plan to cope with mass migration in the Caribbean, where
two Coast Guard cutters routinely patrol on the lookout for boat
people and drug smugglers. A flood of Haitians moving toward the
United States could roil Florida politics during an election year. So
far, there are no signs that a surge of refugees is imminent, the
official said.

Yet Haiti's humanitarian crisis persists. While aid keeps hundreds of
thousands from starving, the nation "is on a collision course with
declining food production and rapid deforestation," according to a
recent article in the Brown Journal of World Affairs by Daniel
Erikson of Inter-American Dialogue. Some areas show a resurgence of
tuberculosis, U.S. officials said.

Officials trace the current unrest to the period after Aristide's
first term expired in 1995, when he was constitutionally barred from
succeeding himself. An Aristide protege, Rene Preval, assumed the
presidency, but the former priest remained a power behind the scenes.
Despite aid from the United States and other Western donors,
government reforms stalled and Haiti slipped back into familiar
patterns of corruption.

Aristide's Lavalas Party swept parliamentary elections in 2000, but
fraud was so widespread that international donors froze aid. Aristide
was elected to a new term later that year, but a low voter turnout
indicated that many Haitians had given up on the democratic process.

Two years later, bank failures across Haiti deepened the nation's
economic plight and triggered violent protests. Despite a resumption
of foreign aid, a new wave of protests against Aristide broke out
last fall.

Once a hero of Haiti's down-trodden, Aristide now faces violent
street-level opposition, including from gangs that once backed him,
and defections from the police forces he once controlled. The
nation's military was disbanded in 1994.

Analysts say opposition political parties have not openly endorsed
the armed insurgent groups, because they don't want to be seen to be
part of the violent overthrow of an elected leader.

Despite intense diplomatic efforts by Caribbean nations, backed by
the United States, opposition parties and Aristide have yet to talk
about restoring order and carrying out the government reforms that
are widely seen as necessary.

Although Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was part of a team - with
former President Jimmy Carter and former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn - that
persuaded the junta to give up power in 1994, he has opted not to
play a direct role in the current crisis. The Bush administration is
mostly preoccupied by terrorism, insurrection and continued political
problems in Iraq.

Although the State Department appears to have lost patience with
Aristide, he retains some political support in Washington. The
liberal Council on Hemispheric Affairs, in a policy paper, accused
the administration yesterday of having "grossly misused" the Haitian
leader.

Within the political opposition, no single leader has presented
himself as an alternative to Aristide, the U.S. official said.

While the official said military intervention poses a risk that
foreign forces would become targets of local fighters, the
administration does not appear to be ruling it out. The official said
the United States wants to exhaust every diplomatic option "before
moving to a higher level."

Erikson, in the Brown Journal, warned that "Washington's hand may be
forced - by a significant migration crisis, a political convulsion to
overthrow the Haitian leadership, or a breakdown to more widespread
violence."

Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun
http://www.baltimoresun.com