20405: (Hermantin)Sun-Sentinel-Aristide flies to Jamaica despite opposition by U.S., Ha (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

  Aristide flies to Jamaica despite opposition by U.S., Haiti's leader

By Peter Eisner
The Washington Post
Posted March 15 2004

BANGUI, Central African Republic · Deposed Haitian President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide left this landlocked African nation where he has been marooned
since his ouster last month and headed for Jamaica accompanied by a U.S.
legislator and other supporters.

After a farewell to the nation's president, François Bozize, Aristide
arrived at the Bangui airport at about 2 a.m. Monday and said he was "very
happy" to be going to Jamaica, where he was invited by the prime minister
for an extended stay.


Aristide and his wife, Mildred Trouillot, then boarded a charted jet,
accompanied by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and activist Randall Robinson,
with a Jamaican legislator and Aristide's attorney, who landed in Bangui
Sunday to collect Aristide and fly with him to Jamaica. The mission was
initially delayed pending permission from Bozize to leave the country.

Before permission was granted, delegation members speculated that Bozize
wanted Aristide to take part in a commemoration Monday to mark the first
anniversary of the coup that brought Bozize to power.

Aristide did not discuss what he planned to do after arriving in Jamaica.
Aristide's Miami-based attorney, Ira Kurzban, said it was premature to raise
the possibility of returning to Haiti. "It is up to the Haitian people,"
Kurzban said. Waters said her goal in leading the delegation was mostly
humanitarian. Aristide and his wife were to be reunited in Jamaica with
their two children, who have been staying with relatives in the United
States since they left Haiti on Feb. 29.

A Jamaican legislator in the delegation, Sheila Hay Webster, said the
Jamaican prime minister, P.J. Patterson, asked that Aristide refrain from
politics during an estimated 10-week stay in Jamaica.

French troops took over patrols Sunday in a slum in Haiti where U.S. Marines
-- under fire -- killed at least two people and angered residents demanding
the return of Aristide.

But Haiti's interim prime minister, Gérard Latortue, said that allowing
Aristide to return to the Caribbean would constitute an "unfriendly act" by
Jamaica. Bush administration officials also opposed his return. "We think
it's a bad idea," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told NBC's Meet
the Press. "We believe that President Aristide, in a sense, forfeited his
ability to lead his people, because he did not govern democratically."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on CNN's Late Edition, said: "And the
hope is that he will not come back into the hemisphere and complicate [the]
situation."

In a brief interview Sunday night, Aristide declined to discuss his plans in
Jamaica or the situation in Haiti. "I'm happy to see my friends, but sad
that so many Haitians are suffering," he said.

Aristide has charged that he was kidnapped by U.S. officials and forcibly
sent into exile. Waters, Robinson and Kurzban have accused the Bush
administration of engineering the departure of Aristide.

Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected president, was ousted in a
military coup in 1991, seven months into his term. He was restored to power
three years later in a U.S. military invasion and was re-elected president
in 2000.

Earlier Sunday, Aristide smiled and embraced Robinson, Waters and her
husband, Sidney Williams, a former U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas, after
they arrived following an 18-hour trip from Miami. They were met at the
airport by the Central African Republic foreign minister, Charles Wenezoui,
and proceeded in a motorcade to the presidential palace surrounded by
machine gun-toting soldiers.

Waters, a staunch supporter of Aristide in Congress, said she had secured a
promise from the Bush administration not to block his departure. "It should
be thought of as giving him a safe and secure place to live," she said.
"That's what it amounts to. The State Department has assured us, and we
pressed them to tell the government of the Central African Republic that
they do not oppose" Aristide leaving the country.

Information from the Associated Press was used to supplement this report.





Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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