20379: (Chamberlain) Team to fetch Aristide lands in Central Africa (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Jean-Lambert Ngouandji

     BANGUI, March 14 (Reuters) - A delegation mainly of U.S. and Jamaican
lawmakers landed in the Central African Republic on Sunday to whisk exiled
Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide back to the Caribbean.
     While Aristide has not been granted asylum in Jamaica, the planned
visit has been slammed by Haiti for stoking tensions there as U.S. and
French troops battle to restore order.
     Haiti's interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue said allowing Aristide
to visit Jamaica, just 115 miles (180 km) from Haitian shores, would be an
"unfriendly act."
     Washington supported the view Aristide should stay away.
     "We think it's a bad idea. We believe that President Aristide, in a
sense, forfeited his ability to lead his people, because he did not govern
democratically," White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice
told NBC's "Meet the Press" program.
     U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on CNN's "Late Edition,"
added: "And the hope is that he will not come back into the hemisphere and
complicate (the) situation."
     Jamaican lawmaker Sharon Hay Webster told reporters the group's goal
was to arrange for the ousted leader, who fled an armed revolt in Haiti two
weeks ago, to see his two young U.S.-based children in Jamaica.
     After landing in the Central African Republic's capital Bangui, the
delegation went to the presidential palace, where Aristide has been living
in an apartment with his wife.
     A government official in Bangui said it was unlikely the delegation
would leave before Monday as President Francois Bozize would want to see
them.
     Bozize grabbed power in a coup d'etat on March 15 last year and
Monday's anniversary is set to be a day of celebrations in Bangui.
     Aristide, a former parish priest regarded as a messiah by many of the
poor he championed but accused of despotism and corruption by his enemies,
says he is still Haiti's elected president and was forced out of office by
U.S. troops.
     Asked if Aristide was duped by the United States, Rice replied: "He
was not duped by the United States. And the fact of the matter is, that now
he has stepped down, Haiti is moving forward."
     The delegation includes Randall Robinson, the former head of black
U.S. lobbying group TransAfrica, and U.S. congresswoman Maxine Waters.
Robinson has said Aristide was kidnapped by U.S. forces. Washington says he
resigned and left voluntarily.

  (Additional reporting by Andrew Gray in Abidjan)