19045: U.S. 'Playing Games' With Haiti, Say Policy Critics (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

U.S. 'Playing Games' With Haiti, Say Policy Critics

http://www.bet.com/articles/0,,c1gb8839-9697,00.html

By Bill Alexander, BET.com Staff Writer

Posted February 20, 2004 -- As Americans are urged to leave a Haiti
bordering on civil war, a cadre of diplomats from the United States and
other countries will soon descend to engage President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide in a game of push-and-pull, stay-and-go.

"The United States is playing games with Haiti," claims native-born Haitian
Robert Fatton Jr., chairman of the Government and Foreign Affairs
department at the University of Virginia.

"Politically connected groups within the country are openly funding
Aristide's overthrow (he named the DC-based National Endowment for
Democracy) while the Bush administration is saying publicly that Aristide
should finish his elected term (which ends February 2006)," says Fatton.

Fatton says the Colin Powell State Department is engaged in a hot
"ideological war" over Haiti. Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) shares
Fatton's view and singles
out Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega ("a Jesse Helms political
appointee," she notes) as the architect of the "right-wing garbage" that
Haiti is a pro-Communist
influence in the Western Hemisphere.

"There are 500 Cuban doctors in Haiti," acknowledges Fatton, and relations
between the neighboring countries are "quite good" because of mutual
survival interests. But, says Fatton, the notion that Aristide is a "mad
populist" about to lunge into communism is crazed.

"Bush wants Haiti to go away in this election year," adds Fatton.  "His
administration doesn't want troops sent for another nation-building effort
and they don't want boat people seized on the high seas and jailed at
Guantanamo. Clinton got away with it, but Bush can't."

A densely populated country of 8 million, roughly the size of Maryland,
Haiti has experienced fierce fighting of late that has killed 57 residents
and resulted in the seizure of the city of Gonaives by an armed gang and
former soldiers.

They have declared themselves independent of Haiti and renamed the city as
the country of Artibonite.

Into all this tension strides a small U.S. security force sent to check out
arrangements in the American Embassy.

Peace Corps members, CARE workers and others have been told to leave the
country by the State Department because of a "steady deterioration of the
security situation."

While Powell has expressed "no enthusiasm" for sending in troops, France
and Canada have volunteered to send in police forces if a political
solution can be brokered.

"A compromise can be reached only if there is a neutral party," observes
Fatton.  "Neither side trusts the United States.  Aristide considers it
unfriendly, while his opposition feels it has not been forceful enough in
ousting Aristide."

.