19962: Esser: Cold War returns to US backyard (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Cold War returns to US backyard

Reed Lindsay finds growing disquiet in Latin America over America's
role in the fall of Haiti's leader

Sunday March 7, 2004
The Observer

For the second time in less than two years, the Bush administration
is fighting accusations that it backed the violent overthrow of a
democratically elected government in Latin America.

Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has charged the US
with forcing him from power at gunpoint. US Secretary of State Colin
Powell dismissed that as 'absurd'. But there is growing international
disquiet. As with the unsuccessful US-endorsed coup against
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in April 2002, Washington faces
charges that it is reverting to Cold War tactics to dispose of
leaders it does not fancy.

Even before Aristide's departure became an alleged kidnapping, some
Latin American leaders were warning that the US role in Haiti was
ominous. 'The removal of President Aristide in these circumstances
sets a dangerous precedent for democratically elected governments
anywhere and everywhere,' Jamaican Prime Minister PJ Patterson, the
chairman of the 15-nation Caribbean Community - Caricom - said last
week. 'We are bound to question whether his resignation was truly
voluntary, as it comes after the capture of sections of Haiti by
armed insurgents and the failure of the international community to
provide the requisite support, despite the appeals of Caricom.'

Three days before Aristide fell, Caricom had appealed to the UN for
immediate intervention in Haiti. The UN Security Council did not
authorise peacekeepers until last Sunday, after Aristide had left and
Washington had announced it would be sending marines. 'We cannot fail
to observe that what was impossible on Thursday could be accomplished
in an emergency meeting on Sunday,' said Patterson. 'We are
disappointed in the extreme at their failure to act.'

After Aristide took office in February 2001, the US played a leading
role in forcing hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid
to be cut off, while bolstering a minority opposition led by Haiti's
tiny elite. In the past three years, the nation's already moribund
economy further deteriorated and the government ground to a halt as
the opposition refused to participate in elections.

The blocked aid and election boycott were a response to legislative
and local elections in May 2000 - six months before Aristide was
elected - in which methodology used to tally eight Senate contests
was questioned by the Organisation of American States.

In recent weeks, the US ignored pleas from the government for an
international peacekeeping force as a motley band of armed thugs led
by a suspected drug trafficker and fugitive death squad leaders
overran more than half the country. US marines now in Haiti have made
no effort to disarm these rebels.

While in the military in the early 1990s, rebel leader Guy Phillippe
received training from US Special Forces in Ecuador. He later became
police chief in Cap-Haitien, where he was accused of drug-trafficking
and plotting a coup. Another rebel leader, Louis-Jodel Chamblain, was
second in command of the murderous FRAPH paramilitary group,
suspected of killing thousands during the 1991-1994 military regime.
Former FRAPH leader Emmanuel 'Toto' Constant, who lives in New York,
has acknowledged working for CIA agents while FRAPH was massacring
dissidents.

There is no evidence so far of the US backing the rebels, as Aristide
aides maintain. But US policy toward Haiti appeared to be a war of
attrition, driven by animosity towards Aristide, a former priest who
rankled Washington with his anti-capitalist sermons and his adherence
to liberation theology, a Catholic doctrine that advocates spiritual
and economic help for the poor and oppressed.

'US policy right now is in the hands of the ideologues,' said Larry
Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric
Affairs. 'You cannot overestimate the relevance of these people in
shaping US policy. In a sense the Helms school of Haitian strategy is
at work here.'

Jesse Helms, right-wing former chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, was a sworn adversary of Aristide. One of his
protégés, Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, is now the top
State Department official overseeing Latin America. Helms denounced
Aristide as 'psychotic' on the Senate floor, based on a CIA document
later discredited as a forgery.

US officials have played down their involvement in Aristide's fall.
But critics of US policy believe this is a thinly veiled coup,
comparing it to the failed overthrow in Venezuela - America backing a
minority opposition that had snubbed polls in favour of removing an
elected president by force.

Aristide, like Chavez, has been accused of a gamut of abuses,
including corruption and arming slum militias. But both were freely
elected and continued to count on fervent support from their nation's
poor majorities.

Chavez himself has declared Aristide's removal 'a tragedy'. 'These
are our brothers who have also been trampled by the Haitian oligarchy
and their foreign allies,' he said last week.

When Chavez was ousted, Latin American leaders threatened to impose
economic sanctions on the de facto government, helping to restore the
President to power two days after he was removed. But those leaders
have been silent about Aristide's ousting although South Africa has
denounced the 'unclear' circumstances. President Mbeki's government
has promised to consider any asylum request by Aristide, who is now
in the Central African Republic. Pretoria has joined Caricom in calls
for an international inquiry but so far it seems unlikely one will
materialise.
.