19356: (Chamberlain) Robinson-Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (AP) -- Veteran activist Randall Robinson said Friday
that Secretary of State Colin Powell has become "an immoral traitor to his
race" based on his policies toward Haiti and other black majority
countries.
   Robinson made headlines in 1994 when he staged a hunger strike to
protest the Clinton administration's policy of repatriating Haitians
fleeing the military dictatorship then in power.
   Powell "is the most powerful and damaging black to rise to influence in
the world in my lifetime," said Robinson, himself an African-American.
   Robinson said Powell has participated in the deconstruction of Haiti's
first democracy and "deliberately destroyed the reputation of its fairly
and democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, one of the
finest human beings I have ever been privileged to know."
   Robinson for many years served as head of TransAfrica, a lobbying group
that tried to influence American policies toward Africa and the Caribbean.
   He read his statement to a reporter from the Caribbean island of St.
Kitts, where he now lives after deciding he no longer wanted to live in the
United States. He explained his decision in a new book, "Quitting America."
   Robinson, 62, was in the limelight in the mid-1980s for outspoken
opposition to American policies toward South Africa, then under apartheid
rule.
   "Never before as now has America presented so palpable a menace to the
small democracies of the black world, and it has expressed to these
fledgling democracies devastating power under the guise of a black official
of whom black Americans would like dearly to have been proud," his
statement said.
   He released his comments after Powell openly questioned Aristide's
ability to rule Haiti effectively during the remaining two years of his
term.
   Robinson said in an interview that he has long opposed U.S. policies
toward Haiti. Because Aristide was his "own man" and could not be
controlled, the United States worked against him, Robinson said. Among
anti-Aristide policies in Washington was to block support for Haiti from
international lending institutions.
   The State Department declined immediate comment on Robinson's statement.