20099: Esser: Aristide Lawyer: Bush Getting Even In Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

The Sacramento Observer
http://www.sacobserver.com

03.08.04

Aristide Lawyer: Bush Getting Even In Haiti
Ira Kurzban Says Deposed Leader May Bring Criminal Charges Against US

By Hazel Trice Edney

WASHINGTON (NNPA) - An attorney for former Haitian President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, now in exile, says he believes President
George W. Bush sought to finish the agenda of his father by removing
rather than protecting the embattled president last week.

Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was originally deposed
during the presidency of George H.W. Bush in 1991. He was reinstated
by President Clinton in 1994, but ousted again on Feb. 29.

"Dick Cheney was the secretary of defense, Colin Powell was the head
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and George Bush, the father, was
president at the time of the first military coup against President
Aristide," recalls the attorney, Ira Kurzban of Miami. "Is there a
settling of scores in some sense? They thought they got rid of him
the first time, but Clinton brought him back. And now they want to
make sure, before the November election, that they get rid of him a
second time."

Kurzban, who says the deposed leader may bring criminal charges
against the U.S. for what he calls Aristide's involuntary resignation
on Feb. 29.

In 1991, the newly-elected President Aristide, a parish priest, was
first deposed by the Haitian military during the presidency of George
H. W. Bush. He remained out of office until he was reinstated with
the help of President Clinton in 1994.

Most members of the Congressional Black Caucus have been outspoken in
their criticism of George W. Bush.

"We have undertaken a coup against a democratically-elected
government in Haiti," Congressman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) said on CNN
last week. Rangel said he had spoken with Aristide by phone.

"He was kidnapped. He resigned under pressure. He and his wife had no
idea where he was going. He was very apprehensive for his life,"
Rangel charged.

As armed rebel forces closed in on Aristide's Port-Au-Prince palace
last week, Aristide abruptly resigned and was whisked away by U.S.
Marines. He and his American-born wife, Mildred Trouillot, are being
housed in Bangui, Central African Republic, reportedly with no phone
privileges after he told the Cable News Network that he'd been
kidnapped.

Secretary of State Colin Powell has called the allegations "baseless,
absurd."

But Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who has also spoken recently to
Aristide, dismissed Powell's response.

"He's really not in charge in this issue. He's a mouthpiece that
they've run out there," Waters says. She notes that this isn't the
first time rebels, with U.S. complicity, tried to oust Aristide.

"There were those who tried to pull a coup d'état on him when he had
been in for seven months (in 1991)," Waters says. "There are those
who say they pulled a coup d'état on him now because he didn't govern
well and he was corrupt and all of that. What was their excuse when
he had only been in for seven months?"

Waters, who participated in a hearing of the House International
Relations sub-committee on the Western Hemisphere last week, notes
that it was the U.S. that funded and trained the Haitian military
during the former Bush administration. Though disbanded under
Clinton, that same army never disarmed. It became part of the Front
For the Advancement and Progress of Haiti. For protection, Aristide
formed gangs of his own, according to some Haiti observers.

Ron Daniels, founder of the Haiti Support Project and executive
director for the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, said
of Aristide: "He's made some errors and some major mistakes. But that
notwithstanding, the United States had no business coercing and
forcing a democratically-elected president out."

Haiti is a nation of 7.5 million people who are the poorest in the
Western Hemisphere, with 80 percent living in poverty.

Bush has asked Haiti to "Reject violence, to give this break from the
past a chance to work."

More than 500 U.S. Marines are part of a United Nations Multinational
Interim Force that has been sent to Haiti to curb violence. With no
army of its own, the Haitian police is too poorly armed to maintain
law and order. Meanwhile, Boniface Alexandrre, chief justice of the
Haiti Supreme Court, has been sworn in as leader of a transitional
government until elections in 2005.

Caricom, the Caribbean Community and Common Market - representatives
from the 15 leading Caribbean nations - has proposed that the next
president shares power with the opposition. Caricom has also called
for an investigation into the removal of Aristide.

Amnesty International, a leading human rights organization, worries
that criminals could seize power in Haiti.

"Amnesty International urges the international community, as a matter
of priority, to ensure that under no circumstances are those
convicted of or implicated in serious human rights abuses given any
position of authority, whether in a transitional government or among
the security forces, where they might commit further violations," the
organization says in a 14-page report titled "Perpetrators of Past
Abuses Threaten Human Rights and the Reestablishment of Rule of Law."

American television has been filled with images of bloody bodies
lying in the streets. Unlike the decision to not show dead U.S.
soldiers on TV, there is no such restraint shown toward Haiti's
deceased.

''How can we send in people and just allow the killings to go on?"
Rep. Donald Payne (D-N.J.) asked in the Western Hemisphere
Subcommittee meeting.

There are unspoken issues, as well.

"There is one issue that is at the core of the problems in Haiti that
few people are talking about," says retired Congressman Walter
Fauntroy (D-D.C.), Who served for 15 years as chairman of a
bi-partisan, bi-cameral Congressional Task Force on Haiti. "In the
last 10 years, Haiti has become a major illegal drug transshipment
for the Cali, Medellin and Baranquilla drug cartels in South America."

Therefore, Fauntroy says, among other actions, the Bush
administration must immediately deliver humanitarian aid and work to
prosecute drug lords.

Eugenia Charles, the Haitian co-director of the Haiti Reborn Program
of the Quixote Center, a non-profit social justice advocate in
Brentwood, Md., sees hope among all the bloodshed.

"The hope lies in the process of democracy," Charles says. "The hope
lies when America would stop mingling in Haiti's politics. When you
have American hands behind it, tweaking every angle of it, it is
impossible for that process to go forward."

Hazel Trice Edney is a NNPA Washington correspondent.
	 

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