27483: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti election may pave way for Aristide's return (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Tom Brown

     MIAMI, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Haiti's return to free elections when it
votes for a new president on Tuesday may not go down well with the U.S.
government, for all its talk about building democracy around the world,
analysts say.
     That's because the front-runner in the chaotic Caribbean country's
presidential race is Rene Preval, a protege of ex-President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide.
     Bush administration officials accused Aristide of despotism, and many
Haiti experts say he was undermined by Washington in the run-up to his
ouster in February 2004.
     Preval, who served as president from 1996-2001 between Aristide's two
terms, is not running as a member of Aristide's Lavalas Family party this
time.
     But he has said he sees no reason why Aristide should not return from
exile in South Africa.
     "It would be catastrophic for U.S. policy to work so hard to first
marginalize and then eliminate Aristide and then, after doing that, for
there to be an electoral road for an Aristide candidate to win office,"
said Larry Birns, director of the left-leaning Council on Hemispheric
Affairs.
     As Haiti edges toward its first election since armed rebels toppled
Aristide, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has been
largely silent about the fate of the poorest country in the Americas.
     It has lent little visible support to the 9,000-strong U.N.
peacekeeping force in Haiti and turned down a recent request from the U.N.
electoral team for the loan of helicopters to collect ballots from remote
areas.
     Cycles of intervention and neglect are common in the "schizophrenic"
history of U.S. relations with Haiti, said Daniel Erikson, a Caribbean
expert at Washington-based think tank Inter-American Dialogue.
     But the current U.S. level of engagement with Haiti could be driven by
unease over Preval's comfortable lead among the 33 candidates, analysts
said.
     Preval has won support from many of Aristide loyalists in Haiti's
teeming slums, and the same business elite that pressed for Aristide's
ouster two years ago opposes him.
     Roger Noriega, who served as the State Department's top official on
Latin America at the time of Aristide's removal, denied that Washington
played any part in toppling him.
     But Noriega said the former priest had become a tyrant who relied on
gangs to enforce his rule.
     "We didn't hold him accountable for anything, and that's how we ended
up in a situation where he could run hit squads and murder his political
opponents, and then we're supposed to come in and save his bacon ... ,"
Noriega told Reuters.
     As a ragtag band of street thugs and former soldiers marched toward
the capital Port-au-Prince in February 2004, Aristide asked the United
States to send in the Marines.
     U.S. officials declined, and instead offered to fly Aristide out of
the country to avoid what Noriega said was an imminent bloodbath.
     Nothing, however, has improved since Aristide was exiled. And Haiti's
poor majority does not appear to have abandoned its support for candidates
associated with Aristide.
     "While Aristide has been removed, his constituency remains alive and
well," said Erikson. As long as the voting public lives on less than $2 a
day, populist appeals are going to have resonance in Haiti, he said.
     Lawrence Pezzullo, special envoy to Haiti under former U.S. President
Bill Clinton, said Preval was viewed as an Aristide crony.
     "The fear with Preval is that he's going to invite Aristide back and
then all bets are off, my friend. ... If he brings Aristide back, that
thing will blow up," he said.
     State Department officials declined to comment. But Noriega said that
for Preval, Aristide's return "would be the end of his ability to run the
country."




 REUTERS