20426: (Chamberlain) Analysts criticize U.S. approach to Haiti crisis (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent

    WASHINGTON, March 15 (Reuters) - A decade after the United States
restored Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power as Haiti's president, the former
priest is back in exile and America's commitment to democracy there is
under fire.
     Despite spending $850 million in aid and twice committing troops in 10
years, the United States "has never learned how to deal with Haiti and
probably never will," said Riordan Roett, director of Western Hemisphere
programs at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins
University.
     "The band-aid approach is what the United States likes. We love
holding elections and then we come home and prepare for the next crisis,"
he said.
     Like many analysts, Roett believes the blame lies largely with
Aristide, who fled to the Central African Republic two weeks ago after
being chased from his country by an armed rebellion. The Americans
encouraged him to leave.
     Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected leader, returned to the
region on Monday, arriving in Jamaica for a stay that the new Haitian
government says will fan tensions.
     Roett faults the former priest for "his intransigence, his inability
to build coalitions and to deal with the violence" that increasingly
characterized his political movement. Others accuse him of corruption.
     Robert Pastor, the Carter administration's Latin American expert, said
the task was too great. "He was not a great leader in a country that needed
a (Nelson) Mandela to heal it."
     Still, experts say President George W. Bush and former President Bill
Clinton share some responsibility for the chaos that recently forced the
deployment of 2,650 U.S. Marines at the head of an international force to
keep order in Haiti.
     Aristide, Haiti's first freely elected president, took office in
December 1990 but was overthrown by the military nine months later and went
into exile in Washington.
     But in returning Aristide to power by force in 1994, the Clinton
administration made a "critical mistake" because its aim was restoring
Aristide rather than a broader goal of bringing democracy to Haiti, said
Robert Perito, author of a new book, "Where is the Lone Ranger When We Need
Him? America's Search for a Post-Conflict Stability Force."
     Perito, of the United States Institute of Peace, said this was
compounded when Aristide was forced prematurely to call new elections. Had
he completed his five year term, the political environment may have been
more stable.
     In 2000, Bush took office determined to focus on major powers like
Russia and China. His key advisers felt Clinton's deployments to Haiti were
of little value and they distrusted Aristide, who was re-elected to a
second term in 2000.
     In the latest crisis, the United States attempted to negotiate a
political power-sharing settlement that might have averted the latest armed
intervention, but the effort came too late, depended too much on other
Caribbean states and lacked sufficient U.S. muscle, critics said.
     Once in Africa, Aristide charged that the United States had kidnapped
him -- an allegation dismissed by U.S. officials -- and insisted he was
still Haiti's president.
     It has prompted Democrats and members of the Congressional Black
Caucus to question why the administration did not do more to save Aristide
from being ousted.
     "We have to make decisions about where we will put American lives at
risk," Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega recently told Congress.
"The erratic, irresponsible behavior of Aristide ... did mean he was not a
sustainable political solution."
     While sympathetic to reluctance to use military force to keep Aristide
in power, Pastor said Bush aggravated suspicions of the United States by
handling the Haiti crisis in a "non-constitutional way."
     A provision in Haiti's constitution could have allowed Aristide to
step aside and cede powers to a council of ministers, but Aristide's
opponents opposed that unless the process was guaranteed by the United
States, which was unwilling to trust Aristide, Pastor said.