Bush Against Sending GIs to Haiti : Policy: He meets with ousted leader and says he hopes democracy can be restored without use of outside forces.

President Bush, recalling the rage that U.S. armed intervention usually produces in Latin America, said Friday that he is unwilling to send American troops to Haiti, even as part of a multinational force, to restore ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

“We’re committed to the restoration of democracy” in Haiti, Bush told a White House news conference. “We feel very strongly about it. I am reluctant to use U.S. forces to try to accomplish it except if American citizens’ lives are in any way threatened.”

Asked if he would have the same objections to a force, sponsored by the Organization of American States and drawing its troops from Latin American nations as well as the United States, Bush said he wants to avoid “having to put together such a force, to say nothing of use it.

“I am very hopeful that this matter can be resolved without such a multilateral force,” he said. “There’s a lesson out there for all Presidents, and the lesson I’ve learned is that you’ve got to be very, very careful of using United States forces in this hemisphere.”

Aristide, who conferred at the White House with Bush, told his own news conference: “Neither President Bush nor myself . . . have chosen to send armed forces to Haiti. We wish the return of democracy. Therefore, we are using all the means of dialogue. I am not thinking of asking or suggesting the need to have foreign troops in Haiti.”

Nevertheless, Aristide said other steps would have to be considered if peaceful means, such as an OAS diplomatic mission that visited Port-au-Prince on Friday, fail to reverse this week’s military coup. He did not say what those measures might be.

“An economic boycott will be essential to asphyxiate the present government,” he said. “An economic boycott seems indispensable but insufficient.”

Meanwhile, Bush, following up on OAS sanctions approved Thursday, signed an executive order freezing the Haitian government’s bank accounts and other assets in the United States and prohibiting American citizens, resident aliens and corporations from doing any sort of business with the junta. Haitian government accounts with the overseas branches of American banks also were blocked.

Administration officials said they do not know the value of the frozen assets.

Aristide’s meeting with Bush climaxed a two-day visit to the United States in which the deposed Haitian leader also addressed the OAS and the U.N. Security Council and talked to members of Congress.

He is trying to generate enough international pressure to force the Haitian military establishment to allow him to return to office as the first democratically elected leader of the impoverished Caribbean nation.

For decades, the world community has virtually ignored Haiti’s bloody political process that produced one authoritarian and repressive government after another. For most of that time, the OAS was unable to say very much because the Western Hemisphere abounded with right-wing dictatorships.

But last June, with all OAS member governments democratically elected (Communist Cuba’s membership was suspended years ago), the organization agreed to take collective action to prevent the overthrow of democratic regimes. The Haiti coup is the first test of that resolve.

Bush was stung by complaints that the United States was unwilling to act as forcefully to restore an elected president in the Western Hemisphere as it was to return a hereditary monarch to the throne in Kuwait.

“The situations are not parallel at all,” Bush said Friday with Aristide at his side. “They’re entirely different.” Although Bush did not elaborate, Administration officials said that Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was an act of external aggression against a recognized nation, while the coup in Haiti was essentially an internal affair that did not spill over the Haitian border.

Officials admitted that the situation in Haiti is closer to the one in Panama, where U.S. forces installed a government that had won a democratic election but had been prevented from taking office by Gen. Manuel A. Noriega. But in Panama, U.S. interests--especially surrounding the Panama Canal--were at stake.

Aristide asserted that the military moved against him because its top officers feared a crackdown on the corruption that has made many of them wealthy.

Aristide said that his information from inside Haiti indicates that at least 500 people have been killed since the coup began. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that the Administration has seen reports of massacres in Haiti but has been unable to confirm them. But he said there have been no credible reports of injuries or other serious incidents involving Americans.

About 7,500 American citizens, many of them dual nationals who also hold Haitian citizenship, have registered with the U.S. Embassy, Boucher said. He said there may be that many more who have not registered.

BACKGROUND

Americans have played a key and often controversial role in Haiti ever since U.S. Marines stormed ashore in 1915 to occupy the troubled Caribbean nation and to restore order after a president was murdered. The Americans stayed on for nearly two decades to build roads, schools and water and sewage systems. But after they left, in 1934, the country quickly deteriorated. Haitians still bristle over the occupation and blame the Americans for supporting military regimes. The former French colony has been independent since 1804.