18799: CBS: Haiti in Crisis Again (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>
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Haiti in Crisis — Again
WASHINGTON, Feb. 18, 2004


CBS News Reporter Charles Wolfson is a former Tel Aviv
bureau chief for CBS News, who now covers the State
Department.


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"We have a serious humanitarian problem there now,"
Secretary of State Colin Powell said, referring to Haiti.
That would be bad enough but there's more, much more. The
Bush administration also has a political crisis on its
hands, in its own hemispheric back yard and it couldn't
come at a worse time.

Currently, officials from U.S. AID, the U.N. and the
Organization of American States are in Haiti, trying to
assess the humanitarian needs of the country's eight
million people who, in the best of times, live in the most
impoverished country in the region. Senior State department
officials say they believe there are adequate supplies of
food, medicine and fuel in the country now. The problem,
they say, is finding a way to distribute them to the people
in need.

The more important issue now is political and officials
throughout the region are in a bind: "We will not accept a
coup d'etat in any form," said Jamaica's foreign minister,
Keith Desmond Knight, after a meeting at the State
Department. Regional leaders want to support Haiti's
democratically-elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
but Aristide is not making it easy for them, allowing
police and gangs he controls to run amok in the
countryside, fighting against opposition leaders and other
gangs, many of whom used to be Aristide supporters.

As the effort to get more international involvement plays
out, Haiti's prime minister, Yvon Neptune, said "We are
witnessing the coup d'etat machine in motion." And
diplomatic sources in Haiti say Aristide has not done
anything yet to settle the situation.

Thus, Powell and his colleagues in the region, at the U.N.
and in France and other French-speaking countries are
calling on both the government of Haiti and the opposition
to follow OAS and CARICOM (a regional organization of
Caribbean countries) guidelines to bring calm to the
situation. Powell emphasized the backing for the
constitutionally-elected government: "We cannot buy into a
proposition that says the elected president must be forced
out of office by thugs and those who do not respect the
law."

In addition to expressed concerns about political change
coming in the form of a coup, Washington is keeping close
tabs on any signal indicating another flood of Haitian boat
people headed in Florida's direction. So far, senior State
department officials say, there are no such signs, but
officials here are worried enough that. Florida's Senator
Bill Nelson advised Powell last week of his concern about
Haitians getting into "rickety boats." Powell, clearly
aware of the potential problem in an election year, assured
the Florida Democrat that "what we don't want to see is an
exodus of Haitians landing anywhere." While Nelson pushed
Powell to get more actively involved, it's clear the Bush
administration has no interest in acting alone this time
around in Haiti, strongly preferring to stay under the
CARICOM umbrella.

The U.S. has a long history of intervention in Haitian
affairs, the last time being 1994 when 20,000 troops were
sent in to restore Aristide to power after he was ousted in
a coup. But Aristide has failed to deliver on promised
reforms. U.S. Ambassador James Foley, speaking this week,
said "I am strongly convinced that the struggle for power
that is occurring in Port au Prince and across the country
hides in a certain way the daily tragedy that the Haitian
people live as they are drawn deeper and deeper into
poverty and misery."

No one expects an improvement in the level of misery for
the Haitian people anytime soon. The best outcome in the
short term would be a restoration of calm, a halt to the
two-week-old outbreak of violence. For now, Washington is
happy to be surrounded by the international community in
its efforts to achieve this, but fear of a total breakdown
in the political structure of Haiti — and its political
implications for the Bush administration — are not far from
the minds of officials here.



By Charles M. Wolfson
©MMIV CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.


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