24119: Durban: (Pub) Senate Testimony of C Rice on Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Lance Durban <lpdurban@yahoo.com>

Corbetters...

Here (below) is a bit of the testimony of Condeleza Rice on the
Senate floor as it relates to Haiti (interesting that in his
questioning, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida appears unaware that
Haiti is already a beneficiary of the Caribbean Basin
Initiative-CBI legislation that dates back to President Reagan,
and that the currently proposed HERO bill goes beyond tax
benefits offered under CBI)

L. Durban


Dr. C. Rice on Haiti
January 17th 2005.

NELSON:  Now, elsewhere in the hemisphere -- and you can
appreciate this since I represent the state of Florida -- Haiti
is a disaster. And it's going to continue to be a disaster until
we get engaged and do something seriously, along with
particularly the other nations of the Western Hemisphere,
financially and politically to help them. I've had a difference
of opinion with the administration. And I think you did have a
policy of regime change. And although Aristide was a bad guy --
you know, it's kind of hard to say we support democracy  and
elections and then we go and push him out. But that's done.
Looking forward, we're getting close to the authorized support
now under the U.N. peacekeeping force of 6,700 military and
1,600 civilian police. Do you think that's an adequate number?

RICE: Well, I believe that the number that has been determined
-- 6,700 or so, led by Brazil, as a stabilization force now,
after the initial stabilization was done by the United States
and the French and others, is judged to be adequate to the task.
The question has really been about more of what can that force
do. And I think the expansion of it, of a more aggressive stance
by that force in going into areas that are particularly violent
and dealing with the violence and the militias in those areas is
probably really the question that we have to deal with.
I'm glad, Senator, you mentioned the police forces, because in
the long run, what really will help Haiti is that it needs a
professional civilian police force that can be counted on to
enforce law, not to break law. And we have, as you well know,
dispatched civilian police trainers from the United States and
from other places to try and engage in that activity. But I
agree completely. Unfortunately, Haiti seems to be a place where
natural and manmade disasters have come together in a really
terrible way for the Haitian people. They do have a new chance
now. They have a transitional government that is trying to
arrange elections in the fall. We need to support that process.
And we have had a successful donor conference recently with a $1
billion commitment, the United States is about $230 million of
that. And so...

NELSON: The problem is they never follow through.

RICE: Senator, I agree. We have to press very hard on people to
follow through on the pledges that they make. That's a problem
worldwide.

NELSON: And this has been going on for 200 years of Haiti's
history.  Now, when the U.N. comes up for reauthorizing, in the
Security Council, that peacekeeping force, what's going to be
your posture about considering an expansion of that peacekeeping
force? This is a country of 7.5 million and a lot of them are
outside in those areas that are now defoliated, thus, the mud,
the slides after the storms and so forth.

RICE: Senator, we've been focused now on trying to stabilize the
situation with the stabilization force that is there. The
Brazilians have done a fine job of leading that. And I just
might mention that this is the first time that a lot of those
countries, many of whom are from the hemisphere, have actually
done peacekeeping in the Western Hemisphere. And so this is a
step forward for the neighbors to embrace Haiti in the way that
they have. What more will be needed, I have to demure. I think
we need to look at the situation. But for now, I think
we're in the right place in terms of peacekeeping forces. We
have been concerned about what missions they were prepared to
take on. And that is being resolved. And there is a more
aggressive posture.  And we really have to put a major effort
into the civilian police development. We also -- as you are
absolutely right, people pledge; they don't follow through. And
we have money to put Haitians to work. We have money to help
restart the Haitian economy, but we've got to follow through.

NELSON: Well, then I want to suggest something to you. And it's
a bill that is sponsored by one of our Republican colleagues,
Mike DeWine of Ohio. And it's called the HERO Act, which is an
acronym.  But what it does is it allows textiles to come in,
like we already have in the Caribbean Basin Initiative in other
areas in the Caribbean, but it allows it for Haiti. And then
they can come duty free into the U.S. It would foster an
economic uplift by creating jobs. But we can't get the
administration to support it. It's a Republican senator's bill.

RICE: Senator, I think we believe at this point that the best
course with Haiti is to work with them to take full advantage of
the Caribbean Basin Initiative, to work with them on job
creation through some of the programs that we have out of our
economic support fund for Haiti. They will benefit in a
secondary way from what happens in Central America
with trade, if CAFTA can be passed. And so at this point, we
think we have the right tools. We just have to make it work. I
understand fully the concerns about Haiti both from a
humanitarian point of view and also from a stability point of
view. And we probably dodged a bullet in the earlier days with
the ability to get Aristide out peacefully, because he
had lost the ability to control that country, to govern
authoritative authoritatively in that country. But we have a lot
of work ahead of us in Haiti. I'd be the first to admit it.

NELSON: Madam Secretary-designate, you can make a difference. If
you'll jump on that horse and ride it and keep on it over the
next four years of your tenure, it'll start to pay huge
dividends. And nobody's done that.  We go in and we fix a
problem, then we turn around and we leave it, and so do
the other nations, and then Haiti just goes back into chaos.