Deposed Haitian Asks for U.N., U.S. Help : Coup: Bush will meet with ousted President Aristide today. Baker not joining OAS mission.

Deposed Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide appealed for support Thursday from Capitol Hill to the U.N. Security Council.

In a flurry of diplomatic activity, Aristide conferred with members of Congress, addressed the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and delivered an evening speech to the Security Council to try to marshal international pressure against Haiti’s coup plotters.

It was the same sort of pressure that forced the island’s military leaders to permit last February’s free elections, which Aristide won.

The White House announced that President Bush will meet with Aristide today.

“We could get democracy with international community help; now, with this same international community, we think that way we will win,” Aristide said of the attempt to reverse the military coup that drove him from his capital on Tuesday.

The Organization of American States voted early Thursday to impose economic and political sanctions against the Haitian junta and to send a nine-member delegation to Port-au-Prince to dramatize hemispheric condemnation of the coup. The action was significant in light of the OAS’ long history of keeping its hands off Haiti’s bloody, violent political process.

The nine-member panel, led by OAS Secretary General Joao Clemente Baena Soares, will include the foreign ministers of Bolivia, Canada, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Trinidad-Tobago and Venezuela, as well as the deputy foreign minister of Argentina and a senior State Department official, probably Assistant Secretary of State Bernard Aronson.

Latin members of the OAS appealed to Secretary of State James A. Baker III to join the delegation so it would have added political clout. But he declined to do so because of plans to spend the weekend at his ranch in Wyoming.

State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler conceded that the message would be stronger if Baker helped to deliver it but added: “The secretary of state has private, personal plans for this weekend that were scheduled, to be honest with you, six months ago.” She said he is entitled to a day off after weeks of strenuous travel in the Middle East and the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon prepared to evacuate an estimated 8,000 Americans from Haiti, if the coup takes an anti-U.S. turn. But for now, Administration officials said there would be no evacuation because Americans do not appear to face special risks.

“Every ambassador . . . always has contingency planning,” Tutwiler said. “The Department of Defense is closely monitoring the situation in Haiti and it is prudent for the department to be prepared to take appropriate action in defense of American lives in case it is determined that such action is warranted.”

Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams said the United States will not use military force to try to restore Aristide to power: “Our position is that we hope that democracy will be restored and that . . . it will happen without violence. But we don’t want to get involved in the internal affairs of Haiti. We have absolutely no interest in using U.S. military forces to in any way interfere with the internal situation in Haiti.”

In a brief, emotion-charged emotionally charged speech Thursday night at the United Nations, Aristide thanked the Security Council for its support.

“Thank you for what you are doing for the Haitian people and thank you on behalf of the victims who number among the hundreds,” the ousted Haitian leader said. “How many more will be massacred if an end is not put once and for all to this attempt to murder democracy?”

Yet despite the expression of gratitude, the council failed to reach agreement on any resolution condemning the coup. Instead, Indian Ambassador Chinmaya Rajaninath Gharekhan, president of the council this month, read a statement summarizing the members’ general position.

“The grave events that have taken place in your country deserve to be strongly condemned,” Gharekhan said. “They represent a violent usurpation of legitimate democratic authority and power in your country. We urge and call for the immediate reversal of the situation and for the restoration of the legitimate government of Haiti.”

Gharekhan said council members supported the action of the Organization of American States. The decision to receive Aristide, who returned to Washington after his U.N. appearance, represented a departure for the organization. Observers could recall no other time when a deposed leader had been allowed to address the Security Council.

Although the Security Council has tried scrupulously over the years to stay out of the internal affairs of member states, there have been exceptions. The most notable occurred earlier this year when the council condemned the massacre of the Kurds in Iraq and encouraged the mounting of a relief operation in northern Iraq. The group also recently condemned the violence in Yugoslavia.

Like the United Nations, the OAS traditionally has been reluctant to get involved in the internal politics of member states. For this reason, it did not try to interfere in earlier coups in Haiti. But previous Haitian coups had replaced one authoritarian government with another, while Aristide won the country’s first democratic election.

Before his U.N. speech, Aristide addressed the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, an OAS affiliate, in Washington. The commission, which meets rarely, is made up of legal experts rather than diplomats.

Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said that the United States will abide scrupulously by the OAS-imposed economic and political boycott of Haiti. Washington cut off about $85 million in annual economic and military aid earlier this week. But the Administration did not break diplomatic relations with Haiti, preferring to keep the U.S. Embassy open to help protect Americans.

Fitzwater said that U.S. Ambassador Alvin Adams Jr. met with the coup leaders to discuss the security of Americans. “The coup plotters have no legitimacy and will not succeed,” Fitzwater said.

Kempster reported from Washington, Meisler from the United Nations. Times staff writer Don Shannon in Washington contributed to this report.