U.S.-Backed Haiti Accord in Danger of Collapsing : Politics: Two key lawmakers back away from pact. They oppose naming a Communist as prime minister.

An American-supported agreement designed to end Haiti’s political crisis and return the country’s first democratically elected president from forced exile was put in serious jeopardy on Thursday when legislative leaders backed away from the accord.

A three-day meeting in Caracas, Venezuela, ended Wednesday night with Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, overthrown in a violent coup on Sept. 30, agreeing with legislative opponents on a new prime minister, Rene Theodore. Theodore is a Communist politician who also fought against Aristide during his eight months in office.

But the two most powerful members of the legislative delegation, Senate Speaker Dejean Belizaire and Sen. Thomas Eddy Dupiton, both severe Aristide critics, told reporters before returning to Haiti on Thursday that the agreement was not viable, even though they had signed the pact after telling the president that Theodore was an appropriate choice.

“Theodore is not the correct choice for these times,” said Dupiton, “because he is a Communist . . . (and) his ideology will meet opposition.”

Belizaire has supported the coup and has vacillated since on his support for Aristide--a populist Roman Catholic priest who challenged Haiti’s military, business and political elite in his eight months in office. Belizaire made an effort to say that his reneging on the U.S.-backed agreement was partly due to Aristide’s stubbornness.

He noted that he originally had told Aristide that Theodore was acceptable. (Although a Communist, Theodore is usually described as an honest and conservative politician.) Still, Belizaire added: “Many political sectors do not accept him. We tried to convince President Aristide of this, but he was adamant.”

Even before the Belizaire-Dupiton turnabout, interviews with politicians and diplomats here found doubts and challenges aplenty to the U.S.-supported plan to end the Haitian crisis, with one anti-Aristide deputy, Pierre Francolis Vital, even pulling a gun from his belt and telling reporters in the Assembly chamber: “This is to make politics. Here in Haiti, politics cannot be done by talk. You have to mean what you say and that means to be ready to kill before you are killed. If they want to impose on me something I don’t want, I’m ready to use it (this gun), and civil war will begin here.”

Much of the criticism of the agreement was aimed at the United States, the presumed author of the pact, an assumption denied by U.S. Ambassador Alvin Adams. After telling American reporters that the United States could work with Theodore and respected his abilities, Adams made a pained point of saying that “the United States has no candidate. Theodore’s name emerged from a Haitian process.”

But Vital’s theatrics were prompted by his claim that two American political officers were in the Assembly to lobby support for Theodore.

Even without the flap over American involvement, the deal to end the Haitian crisis appeared in trouble and there was speculation that Belizaire and Dupiton had engineered the agreement with Aristide knowing it would fail.

Marc Bazin, who finished a distant second to Aristide in the 1990 elections and has since formed an alliance with the military, said in an interview that there is no chance of Theodore being accepted as prime minister.

The agreement itself takes a typically vague, even odd, Haitian approach.

Although the severe international opposition and a resulting economic boycott against Haiti was predicated on Aristide’s return, the Caracas accord made no mention of the president coming back. That is the ultimate aim, said a Western diplomat, but there was no discussion of that in the negotiations and no date was mentioned. There were no conditions set, the diplomat said, and Aristide was given no right to demand certain policies or Cabinet members.

Diplomats favoring the accord said that Brig. Gen. Raoul Cedras, the army commander, and other ranking officers supported Theodore.

But many politicians here said that most of the military opposes the Communists and adamantly opposes Aristide’s return. “That is the reason for Belizaire’s reversal,” said Bazin. “After all, they have been trained and taught for years by the U.S. military to oppose communism.”

There is other speculation, as well, that the agreement, with U.S. urgings, is designed to return power to the traditional pro-American and conservative political, business elite by making Aristide a figurehead, if he ever returns. While denying this, diplomats said Thursday that no government can operate without participation of the educated classes, people with a worldly view. One of Aristide’s mistakes, the diplomats said, was to exclude these people from his government.

Despite the dour prospect of the Assembly approving Theodore--the odds for which one diplomat put at no better than 50-50--the United States and its hemispheric allies plan to make sure opponents understand what is at risk. Once Theodore is approved, it was explained, the U.S. Embassy will recommend to President Bush that he lift the embargo, which so far has cost 240,000 industrial jobs in Haiti and put the people on the edge of devastation. But if Theodore is turned down, the economic punishment will continue.