19792: Esser: President's choice: stay and be killed, or leave (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

President's choice: stay and be killed, or leave
A dangerous precedent for governments in the region

by Jim Lobe
March 4, 2004

The Bush administration's role in facilitating the ouster of Haitian
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide came under sharp and sustained
attack by Democrats in the U.S. Congress Wednesday, while leaders of
the of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) called for an independent
investigation into the circumstances that led to his exile aboard a
U.S.-chartered jet Sunday.

In an unusually rancorous hearing of the House Western Hemisphere
Affairs Subcommittee, Democrats repeatedly assailed the
administration for failing to intervene last week to protect
Aristide's government against a rebellion by former military and
paramilitary officers notorious for human rights abuses, particularly
after Aristide had accepted the terms of a U.S.-backed CARICOM
proposal to share power with his opposition.

Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) sharply questioned the
administration's position that Aristide's resignation was voluntary.
“It is indisputable, based on everything we know,” he said, “that the
U.S. played a very direct and public role in pressuring him to leave
office by making it clear that the United States would do nothing to
protect him from the armed thugs who (were) threatening to kill him.
His choice was simple: Stay in Haiti with no protection from the
international community, including the U.S., and be killed or you can
leave the country. That is hardly what I would call a voluntary
decision to leave.”

Once Aristide accepted the CARICOM proposal, both he and CARICOM
called upon the international community to immediately deploy troops
to halt the insurgency.

Washington, however, said it would only support sending troops if the
opposition — which has repeatedly refused to engage in any
negotiation with Aristide since his election in 2000 — also accepted
the proposal. When the opposition rejected it, Washington urged
Aristide to resign and leave the country.

Only then did it begin deploying troops to Haiti pursuant to a
hastily approved resolution of the UN Security Council Sunday
afternoon.

Washington's tactics clearly infuriated the CARICOM leaders. “We
cannot fail to observe that what was impossible on Thursday could be
accomplished in an emergency meeting on Sunday — President Aristide
having departed from office,” said Jamaican Prime Minister P.J.
Patterson, who had led the mediation effort at Washington's behest.
Patterson also noted that Washington failed to involve or consult
with CARICOM regarding Aristide's departure.

He warned that Aristide's ouster and the role played by Washington in
facilitating it risked creating a “dangerous precedent” for all
democratically elected governments in the region, a warning echoed
Wednesday by Democrats on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) stated angrily that people throughout the
Americas were “watching this government turn its back on democracy.”
He told Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs
Roger Noriega during Wednesday's hearing: “The message is clear: this
government will not stand up for a democratically elected head of
state they do not like.”

For his part, Noriega insisted that Washington had not forced
Aristide to leave the country, as the ousted president has since
alleged. And he insisted that the U.S. was under no obligation to
protect the ousted leader, insisting that “it wasn't a sustainable
political solution to merely prop him up.

“We have to make decisions about where we will put American lives at
risk,” he insisted, adding that, in Washington's view, Aristide “was
not a reliable interlocutor.”

But in a floor speech Tuesday evening, Dodd, the Democrat's ranking
expert on Western Hemisphere affairs, charged that U.S. actions may
also have violated the three-year-old Inter-American Charter on
Democracy, a U.S.-backed document that requires its signatories to
come to the aid of any democratically elected government in the
region that is threatened with being removed by unconstitutional
methods.

“President Aristide, a democratically elected president, made that
request and, of course, not only did we not provide assistance,” said
Dodd, “in fact, we sat back and watched as he left the country,
offering assistance for him to depart.

“When governments are challenged by violent thugs, people with
records of violent human rights violations, engaged in death squad
activity...then I think it is worthy of note that we have walked away
from these international documents, signed only three years ago...”,
he said.

Jamaica's Patterson also questioned the legitimacy of Washington's
role, saying that Caribbean leaders, after speaking with Aristide
from his temporary exile in the Central African Republic, were not
convinced he had resigned “voluntarily.” It was on that basis, he
said, that CARICOM wanted to see an investigation carried out under
the auspices of independent international body, such as the United
Nations.

He said the group, of which Haiti is also a member, would protest “in
the strongest possible terms anything which would have the effect of
removing by unconstitutional means persons who have been duly elected
to office.”

In his testimony, Noriega stressed that the 2000 elections, in which
Aristide officially won some 80 percent of the vote, fell short of
international standards, although he admitted that Washington had
recognized the former priest as the constitutional president. Backed
by Republican lawmakers, he repeatedly insisted that Aristide had
governed poorly and had turned “a blind eye to the rampant corruption
and drug trafficking of those within his circle of power.

“Aristide had undermined democracy and economic development in Haiti
rather than strengthened it,” he said.

Noriega also confirmed that U.S. officials had told Aristide they
could not guarantee his safety in the event of an assault by the
rebels whose leaders had sworn to arrest or kill him. He also
confirmed that the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy who
had escorted Aristide from his residence to the airport had asked him
for a letter of resignation before he boarded the plane Washington
had chartered to take him into exile. Noriega insisted that
Washington would “probably” have flown him to safety even if he had
not provided a letter.

But Charles Rangel, a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus
(CBC), suggested that, under the circumstances, Aristide had been
essentially coerced into resigning. “I would've signed (a resignation
note), too,” he told Noriega.

“He was forced out,” said Rep. Maxine Waters, another CBC member, who
spoke with Aristide before the hearing.

Jim Lobe is a journalist with OneWorld U.S., where this article
originally appeared.
.