OAS Sending Team to Warn Junta in Haiti

The nations of the Western Hemisphere agreed late Wednesday at an emergency meeting of the Organization of American States to send a high-level delegation to Haiti to warn the island’s military junta that it faces an array of economic and diplomatic sanctions if the democratic government is not restored.

Earlier, the Pentagon ordered a contingent of Marines to fly to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for possible duty in evacuating U.S. citizens from Haiti.

The foreign ministers of the 34 OAS states acted after ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide appealed to the organization for a strong statement of international support.

The ministers agreed to recommend that all member states suspend their economic, financial and commercial links with Haiti, suspend any arms shipments and impose virtual diplomatic isolation.

The statement will also admonish the military junta that if the OAS initiative does not persuade it to restore Aristide to his presidency, the organization will meet again in emergency session to adopt stronger measures.

U.S. officials were elated at the outcome of Wednesday’s meeting and characterized the action as an important precedent for an organization that in the past has been hyper-cautious and fearful of any appearance of intervening in the affairs of a Latin American or Caribbean nation.

The statement, which officials said was growing stronger as it passed through succeeding drafts, is expected in large part to meet Secretary of State James A. Baker III’s request that the OAS speak with “the strongest possible” voice in condemning the takeover.

At the Pentagon, officials said no decision has been made to carry out the evacuation of Americans from Haiti. But they said that about 400 Marines were being dispatched from Camp Lejeune, N.C., in case President Bush ordered a rescue operation.

But the President and other Administration officials stressed that the United States has no intention of becoming involved in the fighting in Haiti.

“I’m worried about Haiti,” Bush told reporters before leaving Washington on a campaign trip. “Here’s a whole hemisphere . . . that’s moving in a democratic way, and along comes Haiti now, overthrowing an elected government. We care very much about it.”

But he added: “I am disinclined to use American force. We’ve got a big history of American force in this hemisphere, and so we’ve got to be very careful about that.”

Pentagon officials said more than a dozen Navy ships now on routine training maneuvers in the Caribbean could support the evacuation. The Marines likely would use helicopters to airlift Americans from the strife-torn island, officials said. Some reports estimated there be as many as 7,000 Americans in Haiti.

Earlier in the day, Bush expressed concern for the future of Haiti and the effect that a decision Tuesday to freeze U.S. aid would have on its people. He said, however, that the Administration will support any sanctions that the OAS chooses to impose.

Aristide, speaking extemporaneously in the main chamber of the OAS, gave a harrowing account of his arrest and deportation by coup leaders. As he pleaded for help, hundreds of Haitian-Americans in the street outside chanted opposition to the military coup.

He called on the OAS “to send a delegation to meet with the criminals who have taken power, warn them of the measures that could be taken . . . and tell them that the international community condemns them.”

“If you go to Haiti, we believe that the people in power will hesitate to kill people,” Aristide said. “They would be afraid to carry out a blood bath. And it might open the doors to a possible solution”--one which Aristide did not spell out.

He added that “we know dictators make personal decisions without any code of international ethics.”

And, to an ovation, he exhorted the people of Haiti, whether inside or outside the country, to “have confidence in the international community, that they are fighting to preserve the democratic process. Stay mobilized and act for justice. Use all nonviolent means--but stay mobilized.”

As Aristide recounted the momentous events of the last year, in which a democratically elected government was installed for the first time in his nation’s history, he was interrupted time and again by applause from a sympathetic audience.

For the first time in decades, every member of the hemispheric organization--except, for the moment, Haiti--is a democracy, and it was Aristide’s appeal to democracy that especially stirred the audience. (Communist Cuba, which is listed as an OAS member, has been suspended from organization activities since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.)

“We believed that democracy had become a reality” after his election last December, Aristide recalled. “I intend to go home to democracy. . . . The danger that exists (in Haiti) threatens all Latin America. We know that the international community cannot allow the coup--it would be bad for all Latin America.”

The OAS is traditionally slow to act, and, in any question involving the internal affairs of a member state, it is sometimes timid when it does act.

But experts here believe that the wave of democracy rolling over the hemisphere could bring the group to “a turning point,” as Arturo Valenzuela, head of Georgetown University’s Center for Latin American studies, put it.

“In the past, there has been a regional aversion to any kind of intervention, but that has been historically aimed against the United States, which is not an antagonist this time,” he said.

He noted that the OAS, meeting in Chile last June, agreed to a statement of principle committing the organization to take concrete steps to safeguard democracy wherever it might be threatened in the region.

“These are all elected governments now, and every elected government has a powerful interest in responding to a threat,” Valenzuela added. “I doubt they will do anything to respond militarily. But if they put in play some sanction, economic or diplomatic, it would be historic.”

Meantime, in Haiti, some residents cautiously ventured from their homes to buy food Wednesday, but many shops remained shut in the capital of Port-au-Prince and traffic was light, the Associated Press reported. The army appealed on the radio for people to return to work. Sporadic gunfire rang out, but fewer soldiers were on the streets.

The British news agency Reuters reported that some Aristide supporters in the capital put up barricades made of stones and trees and set them ablaze to defy the military junta.

The junta’s leader, Brig. Gen. Raoul Cedras, told a news conference that the military will hand over power to Parliament, but he made no mention of elections and warned Aristide not to try to return from exile.

Cedras denied he planned Monday’s coup, claiming that he and other officers protected Aristide from rank-and-file soldiers who wanted to kill the president.

More than 100 people are believed to have died in the coup. But Cedras said any civilians who may have been killed by soldiers were shot in self-defense. “I have never given orders to shoot. The military has suffered a lot from the civilians,” he asserted.

Cedras also asserted that the last straw for Aristide’s opponents was the alleged training of an elite presidential guard under Aristide’s direct command--a unit that raised the specter of the Tontons Macoutes, the private army of the 29-year Duvalier dictatorship, which ended in 1986.

He also claimed that Aristide ordered the execution of opponent Roger Lafontant in the final hours before fleeing. Lafontant was a former leader of the Tontons Macoutes who also led a coup attempt against the interim civilian government on Jan. 7, a month before Aristide’s inauguration. Nearly 70 people died in protests after that coup attempt.

A Welcome Mat

If deposed Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide does seek refuge in France, he would join such celebrated exiles as:

Former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier, ousted in 1986, lives in luxurious exile in the Riviera resort of Vallauris.

Cambodia’s Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who lives in a villa at Mougins, hopes to return to Phnom Penh soon under a U.N.-brokered peace accord.

Vietnamese Emperor Bao Dai, on the Riviera, stepped down in 1954 after his French protectors left Indochina.

Lebanese Christian Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun lives in a heavily guarded home near Marseilles. He was spirited out of French Embassy in Beirut in August.

Former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel lives in Paris and often speaks out against his country’s new Syrian-backed leaders.

Former Iran President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, an opponent of Shah of Iran, lived in France until 1979 when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power. After he broke with Khomeini in 1981, Bani-Sadr fled back to France.

Shahpour Bakhtiar, shah’s last prime minister, came to France after Iran’s revolution. He was murdered at his villa in a Paris suburb in August.

Source: Reuters