6537: Fwd: ARISTIDE TRIES TO SOOTHE THE US (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radman <resist@best.com>
>From: eire2000@aol.com
>Subject: ARISTIDE TRIES TO SOOTHE THE US
>
> >From Americas.org -
>
>  On December 28, the administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton
>  released a letter it had received the day before from Haitian
>  President-elect Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who is to take office on
>  February 7. In the letter, negotiated a week earlier with former
>  national security adviser Anthony Lake and the State Department's
>  special Haiti coordinator, Donald Steinberg, Aristide agreed to eight
>  "reforms" demanded by the U.S. These include: runoffs for 10 Senate
>  seats awarded to Aristide's left-populist Lavalas Family (FL) party in
>  May; the inclusion of opposition members in Aristide's government; the
>  establishment of a new electoral council, in consultation with the
>  opposition; a semi-permanent mission of the Organization of American
>  States (OAS) in Haiti to oversee domestic political negotiations;
>  international monitoring of human rights; and what the Washington Post
>  calls "working out an economic reform program with the International
>  Monetary Fund [IMF] and World Bank."
>
>  Aristide made the concessions without receiving any promises of aid from
>  the U.S. U.S. analysts generally agree that Aristide was trying to
>  smooth relations with Washington before January 20, when Texas governor
>  George W. Bush takes office as president. Bush's Republican party has
>  been especially antagonistic to Aristide. A week earlier, Sen. Jesse
>  Helms (R-NC, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair), Rep. Benjamin
>  Gilman (R-NY, House International Relations Committee chair), and Rep.
>  Porter Goss (R-FL, House Intelligence Committee chair) issued a joint
>  statement saying that the U.S. "must now deal with Haiti for what it has
>  become... Narco-traffickers, criminals and other antidemocratic elements
>  who surround Jean-Bertrand Aristide should feel the full weight of U.S.
>  law enforcement."
>
>  But other sectors in the U.S. call for limited support for Aristide, who
>  has been "doing practically everything that critics in the United States
>  and elsewhere have asked for in the past couple of years," according to
>  an editorial in the Washington Post. "Aristide remains the country's
>  only genuinely popular leader and perhaps the only one who, if he chose
>  to, could implement the economic and political reforms the country
>  desperately needs. The failure of his government would likely result in
>  another massive wave of refugees setting out for Florida."