18709: (Craig) Article: Haiti's Embattled Leader Vows to Finish Term (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dan Craig <hoosier@att.net>

Haitis Embattled Leader Vows to Finish Term
February 17, 2004
By LYDIA POLGREEN

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb. 16 - President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, defiant in the face of an increasingly violent
opposition movement, denounced it on Monday as an effort to
overthrow Haiti's elected government and declared that only
he can save the country from civil war.

"We have had 32 coups in our history," Mr. Aristide said in
an hourlong interview with The New York Times at the
National Palace on Monday morning. "The result is what we
have now: moving from misery to poverty. We need not
continue moving from one coup d'etat to another coup
d'etat, but from one elected president to another elected
president."

Asked whether he would consider stepping aside to prevent
further bloodshed in a conflict that has killed dozens of
people and paralyzed much of the country, he replied: "I
will leave office Feb. 7, 2006. My responsibility is
precisely to prevent that from happening. What we are doing
now is preventing bloodshed."

Speaking in an anteroom outside his spacious office, he
called for armed opposition groups to lay down their
weapons and for political opponents to begin discussions
with the aim of having new parliamentary elections as soon
as possible.

"It is time for us to stop the violence and to implement
the Caricom proposal for elections," Mr. Aristide said,
referring to the plan of the Caribbean Community, an
organization of Caribbean states, to build trust between
the government and opposition groups as part of the
groundwork for new parliamentary elections.

Political strife has swept the country since 2000, when a
dispute over parliamentary elections that the Organization
of American States and other foreign observers said were
flawed led opposition political parties to boycott the
presidential election later that year.

The confrontation has escalated in recent months as
opposition groups took to the streets to protest what they
contend is Mr. Aristide's increasingly autocratic style.
This month, the political dispute turned violent, with
armed groups overrunning police stations in a dozen cities
and towns.

The violence spread further on Monday. Militants took over
the police station in Hinche, a town about 45 miles
northeast of Port-au-Prince, the capital, killing the
police chief, The Associated Press reported.

Now, with a violent group of former Aristide supporters in
control of Gonaives, a major city on the main north-south
highway between the capital and Cap Haitien, the country's
second largest city, a crisis looms in the arid north,
where more than a quarter million people need food
assistance to survive.

The current political crisis is a dramatic reversal for Mr.
Aristide, once a parish priest serving in the slums who
became the country's first democratically elected
president. He was revered by millions, especially among
Haiti's rural and urban poor, and seen as the savior who
would finally lift the poorest nation in the Western
Hemisphere. He turned in his clerical collar for a wedding
ring, marrying an American-born Haitian, and his vestments
for business suits.

Opposition groups and diplomats accuse him of forming
militant gangs that act as a sort of auxiliary force to the
police. One such group is behind the uprising in Gona?ves.
Its leaders say they have joined with sinister figures from
the country's violent past, including the leader of death
squads that terrorized the country after the coup in 1991
that ousted Mr. Aristide. The United States returned him to
power with 20,000 American troops in 1994.

The 2000 elections led to the suspension of $500 million in
international aid, an act Mr. Aristide refers to as an
"economic embargo," and he blames this suspension for his
failure to transform Haiti's economy, health and education.
"I don't say I am the best," Mr. Aristide said. "But think
of what I did with nothing in terms of financial
resources."

He said his main achievement, however, was reviving Haiti's
spirit. He cited a march on Feb. 7, which the government
claims drew a million people in support of his presidency.
"The Haitian people want to live with dignity," Mr.
Aristide said. "We don't sell our dignity. Dignity is
linked to freedom. We don't sell our freedom.

"If last Saturday, despite the economic situation, one
million marched in a peaceful way, it is because they see
we are not lying to them, we are telling them the truth.
Dignity, freedom and truth are linked."

Political and civic opposition groups, who disavow any
connection with the armed uprisings, have said they will
not take part in elections until Mr. Aristide steps down.

"It is impossible to get free, honest and democratic
elections with Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the National
Palace because he will control the whole process," said
Micha Gaillard, a leader of the Democratic Convergence, the
main opposition group, in an interview on Monday. "But if
the first step for him is not to resign, then he should
deliver what Caricom asked him to do."

The Caricom proposals would require Mr. Aristide to take a
number of steps, from ensuring that opposition marches can
go forward to disarming groups of militants loyal to the
president. He must also reform the country's tiny police
force, which has fewer than 4,000 members, and form a
governing council that would include opposition groups. Mr.
Aristide said he has begun taking action on all of those
requirements, but offered little concrete evidence, only
future plans.

Mr. Aristide said opposition groups do not support
elections because they are afraid they will lose and would
rather let the country slowly destabilize. "They fear the
principle of `one man, one vote,' " Mr. Aristide said.
"They don't fear me; they fear the people. And they don't
fear the people because the people are violent. They fear
the people because the people are ready to vote."

He accused the leaders of political and civic opposition
groups of being in league with the militants who have taken
over Gonaives. "The government is doing what it can to have
a safe environment," he said. "On the other side, they are
killing people, keeping 150,000 people hostage in
Gonaives."

Mr. Aristide condemned the involvement of Louis-Jodel
Chamblain, an official in the former Haitian Army who was
accused of committing many atrocities as part of the Front
for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, known as Fraph,
after the 1991 coup.

"Fraph and the army killed more than 5,000 people and pigs
were eating their corpses," he said. "And today Fraph is
back."

Experts on Haitian politics said the arrival of militants
like Mr. Chamblain had made it all the more urgent that the
current crisis be resolved quickly, before those forces
take control of a larger portion of the country.

Henry Carey, a professor of political science at Georgia
State University, said the opposition must abandon its
insistence that no elections be held until Mr. Aristide is
gone. "What they should do is put the interests of country
ahead of their own antipathy and own personal enmity,"
Professor Carey said.

At the same time, Mr. Aristide must own up to relying on
violent gangs and take the necessary steps to disarm and
neutralize them, Professor Carey said. "What he has got to
do is stop the violation of human rights and he has got to
demobilize these violent groups," he said. "But he can't do
that without international help."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/17/international/americas/17HAIT.html?ex=1077999722&ei=1&en=6af8108bfe98ea7a
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company