Ousted Haitian Leader Calls for End to Exodus

Deposed Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide called Saturday on the country’s citizens to stop their exodus across dangerous seas to the United States and instead stay in Haiti and fight peacefully for democracy.

Speaking to reporters after a session of face-to-face negotiations with Haitian government opponents, Aristide said the solution to his country’s crisis would come in two stages.

“In the first, Haitians must try to stay in Haiti in order to continue nonviolent resistance (to the military regime),” he said. “In the second phase, the democratic process will return.”

Both Aristide and members of the delegation representing Haiti’s present military-led government called the talks “positive” and expressed cautious optimism that the parties would eventually reach an understanding to end the crisis.

But Augusto Ramirez, head of a delegation of mediators from the Organization of American States, which brokered the talks here, said that the Cartagena meeting is only the first step in a long process to restore democracy in Haiti.

“The problems of Haiti will not be solved in one day in one city,” Ramirez told reporters at the end of Saturday’s two negotiating sessions. “It needs a lot of patient work.”

He added that all parties had decided to form a six-member working group to draft a list of negotiating points for use in today’s scheduled final session of the current round of talks. Ramirez did not divulge what those points were.

The OAS delegate said that Saturday’s talks were “helpful” and would lead to an announcement at the end of today’s session. But he did not specify the nature of that announcement.

On Saturday, Haitian government delegates stopped far short of meeting Aristide’s demand that he be allowed to return to Haiti, which he left last September during a bloody coup. Aristide was elected president in December in what was regarded as the first genuinely free elections in that country’s history.

An international trade embargo supported by the United States and the OAS cut off gasoline supplies to the country and contributed to a mass flight of Haitians to the United States.

According to the U.S. State Department, more than 3,000 Haitians have been rescued at sea in recent days. More than 500 of the boat people were returned to their country by the U.S. Coast Guard before a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order to stop such repatriations.

The Bush Administration has called the Haitians “economic refugees” who should be returned to their homeland.

In Cartagena, Aristide blamed the situation not on the international trade embargo, which he supports, but on a stubborn military regime, led by Brig. Gen Raoul Cedras, which refuses to reinstall the president.

“During seven months of my administration, not only were there not any refugees leaving Haiti, there were Haitians from the diaspora that were coming back to Haiti to strengthen democracy,” Aristide said.

In contrast, government delegates to the talks continue to blame the economic embargo for Haiti’s aggravated problems and to play down the issue of Aristide’s possible return.

After calling Saturday’s morning negotiating session here “positive,” Senate President Dujean Belizaire said that his delegation was using the meetings “to show the necessity of lifting the embargo as a moral obligation of the international community.”

Speaking of Aristide, the legislator added that “democracy does not pass through one man” but instead “arises from institutions.”

Another delegate, the military government’s Foreign Minister Jean Robert Simonise, was less delicate, calling Aristide “the father of the embargo.”

“It’s up to him whether he wants to keep making the people suffer. The ball is in his court.”

Despite that kind of strong language from the government, several OAS representatives who brokered the talks said they were going well.

“The atmosphere has been much less tense than one could imagine,” said Augusto Ramirez Ocampo, leader of eight OAS representatives who are attending the three-day meeting after having arranged for it to be held.

“Aristide has shown tremendous flexibility and so have his opponents,” said another delegate, who nevertheless said that the talks had not gone beyond vague platitudes about the need to listen to one’s opponents.

He said he doubted that any concrete agreement would be signed in Cartagena. The representative explained that the delegation of eight members of Haiti’s National Assembly and the regime’s foreign minister have shown that they are mere mediators between Aristide and the real power in Haiti, the army.

Simonise appeared to confirm that view when he said that any decisions made in Cartagena would have to be approved in Haiti.

“It is clear that these (Haitian delegates) did not promote the coup,” said the OAS delegate, speaking on condition of anonymity. “But they are now supporting it and protecting the army’s interest.”

He added that Aristide’s continued overwhelming support among the Haitian people made it impossible to ignore the ousted president’s demand to return, despite the danger that certain members of the military could present if the country is not stabilized first.