18687: (hermantin)Palm Beach Post-Editorial-Head off Haiti disaster (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Head off Haiti disaster

Palm Beach Post Editorial
Saturday, February 14, 2004



The United States must do more than anticipate the unnumbered Haitians who
might flee the country's turmoil and head for Florida. So Sen. Bill Nelson,
D-Fla., was correct last week to question President Bush regarding that
country "for which the United States has no discernible plan because our
bilateral relations are adrift."

Since the disputed parliamentary elections of May 2000, when many Haitians
believe that Jean-Bertrand Aristide stole the presidency, unrest has
escalated to the point where the country is disintegrating. Amid the violent
clashes and mounting deaths, Mr. Aristide is refusing to allow new
elections, while opponents are refusing to participate in them until he
resigns.

So it was timely that three Florida congressmen -- Mark Foley, Kendrick Meek
and Adam Putnam -- received a State Department briefing this week on the
situation and how the U.S. can encourage a peaceful resolution. "The
critical message is to signal the administration that we can't wait for the
boats to start," said Rep. Foley, a Republican from West Palm Beach. "We
need to take a leadership role in averting another Haiti disaster, or
Florida will be facing chaos."

Government officials in Washington and Haitians in South Florida condemn
what President Aristide is doing to the country, from corruption to the
stifling of dissent. If the U.S. unilaterally can go into Iraq, we should be
able to go to a neighbor and say that certain behavior no longer is
acceptable. Florida's lawmakers correctly are calling for a proactive
approach: Stop the killings and subversion of law by rallying the
Organization of American States, including France and Canada, to provide
resources for a contingent of international civilian police to stabilize the
situation; then restructure the Haitian National Police with the goal of
moving ahead with democratic elections.

Mr. Aristide, the "priest of the poor," was democratically elected in 1990,
forced out by the military and reinstalled following a U.S. invasion in
1994. In hindsight, the U.S. might be criticized for listening to one set of
voices, but the cacophony at the time overwhelmingly was pro-Aristide. He
called his country "the mother of liberty" last month while honoring Haiti's
bicentennial, but in many ways he has been worse than the Duvaliers who
proceeded him, a classic case of the oppressed becoming the oppressors.

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