21582: (Chamberlain) Haiti-US (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By MICHELLE FAUL

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, April 27 (AP) -- The U.S. ambassador to Haiti warned
that the impoverished country has no choice but to become a modern nation,
but must first overcome massive challenges that include drug trafficking
and a deep divide between the rich and poor.
   Ambassador James B. Foley outlined future U.S. policy toward the country
"whose problems quickly become our problems" in a wide-ranging speech
Tuesday to business leaders.
   Despite the "enormous number of reasons to be pessimistic," he said the
United States was optimistic, committed to help transform the country in
the long term, and would announce "considerable aid" at a June donors'
conference where he appealed for others also to be generous, specifically
naming the European Union.
   "Haiti doesn't really have the choice of missing this new last chance,"
he said. "It's going to change because it must change; the alternative is
unthinkable."
   The United States' main concern in Haiti is drug-trafficking that
corrupted the ousted regime of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and threatens future
governments, the U.S. ambassador said.
   Foley said leaders of the February rebellion that led to Aristide's
ouster must lay down their weapons. He also urged Haiti's tiny and mostly
lighter-skinned elite to abandon its class system and antiquated business
methods that breed corruption while keeping the darker-skinned majority in
near-serfdom.
   "The current situation in Haiti is disastrous," Foley told more than 200
people at a dinner of the Haitian-American Chamber of Commerce.
   "Everything must change: the government, the society, the private
sector, the political parties," he said. "Especially, mentalities in
general must evolve profoundly so that Haiti can become a modern nation."
   With Haiti a transshipment point for up to 15 percent of Colombian
cocaine that reaches the United States, Foley said Washington's "biggest
worry" is trafficking.
   "With the departure of one regime that maintained intimate relations
with big traffickers ... there will be an effort to rebuild the networks --
including by trying to infiltrate and manipulate the police," he said.
   That appeared to refer to rebel leader Guy Philippe's efforts to have
1,500 former soldiers from Haiti's disbanded army enlisted in a recruiting
drive to fortify and professionalize a police force that fled before the
rebel advance before Aristide was ousted. The United States says Aristide
promoted officers for political reasons and used the force to attack his
enemies.
   U.S. officials have said anonymously that Philippe facilitated drug
trafficking while he was Aristide's police chief for north Haiti, but none
has provided evidence and Philippe denies the charges. Aristide also denies
claims that he profited from the Haitian drug trade, worth an estimated $1
billion annually.
   Haiti's entrepreneurs must invest in all key sectors and especially in
educating people, he said. Haiti may has one of the world's worst literacy
rates, at well below 50 percent.
   Entrepreneurs must "turn the Haitian masses into real consumers," Foley
said. Salaries seldom top the mandatory $2 a day, while half the work force
is unemployed or tries to get by with odd jobs.
   Foley's speech, delivered in elegant French, drew much applause but some
hostility.
   "I think it is time now to accept your responsibility and admit you made
a mistake in making us suffer 10 years of Aristide," said businessman
Philippe Villedrouin.
   He was referring to President Bill Clinton's deployment of 20,000 troops
to Haiti in 1994 to end a brutal military dictatorship, restore Aristide to
power and halt an exodus of tens of thousands of boat people.
   Aristide, a former priest who ministered to Haiti's poor, became the
first freely elected leader on a wave of hope in 1991 that he would finally
lift Haitians from grinding poverty.
   After he was ousted, Aristide has been given temporary asylum in Jamaica
on condition he remained silent about his charges that the United States
engineered a coup against him -- charges Foley denied.