Haiti Plan for Aristide’s Return Just Barely Alive

The dog clearly had been hit by a car, its hind legs broken and dragging. Yet it kept crawling forward. It was alive. But a look in the rearview mirror of the passing car showed a big truck bearing down on the crippled creature.

To most diplomats, Haitian politicians and other experts, the fate of the dog seen on Port-au-Prince’s Harry S. Truman Boulevard and a U.S.-backed agreement for ending nearly six months of Haiti’s political and economic crisis are the same.

Both are still alive, but just barely and probably for only a wisp more of time. “Someone might be able to come up with a new program, but it won’t work. There is no life left. It is on a respirator,” a Western diplomat said.

The accord went into cardiac arrest Wednesday just before the National Assembly was to vote on a complicated proposal that would at some unspecified time restore ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide as chief of state but name one of his opponents, moderate Communist Rene Theodore, to run the government and extend an amnesty to the military chieftains who toppled Haiti’s first democratically elected leader last Sept. 30.

Right after the Assembly’s president, Sen. Dejean Belizaire, announced the list of speakers to finish the debate, opposition senators walked out, breaking a quorum and forcing adjournment of the Assembly.

While no one seemed sure of the rules--and Haitian legislators break their rules more often than not--some officials said the Assembly had been dissolved and could not be recalled, at least not without a long and complicated process.

However, a major proponent of the agreement, Sen. Jacques Rony Mondestin, said Thursday that the Senate will meet in the next day or two and that he expects the National Assembly to reconvene next week, perhaps as early as Tuesday.

The plan was worked out under the auspices of the Organization of American States with the backing of the Bush Administration. Under the plan, the accord would lead to an end of nearly five months of economic embargo that has strangled the country’s agriculture and industry and left much of the population destitute. In addition, $450 million in suspended international aid would be immediately freed.

It wasn’t enough. Combining to crush immediate hope for the negotiated settlement were such elements as a visceral hatred that some influential Haitians feel for Aristide and his concept of class conflict, Aristide’s own rambling attacks on the military, the fears of some that they would lose the profits of corruption they have acquired during the crisis and the personal ambition of a key player.

Wednesday’s events were carefully orchestrated by opponents of the plan and played out in an atmosphere that swung from pandemonium to mayhem and back. There were shouting matches on the Assembly floor, with one senator having to be restrained from punching a deputy.

At another point, Deputy Josue LaFrance pulled a pistol from the waistband of his trousers during a confrontation with an unnamed foe, sending reporters in a nearby press gallery scurrying.

Several anti-Aristide deputies made it clear they were wearing guns as they strutted and shouted throughout the raucous debate. But what appeared to be a game of bravado aimed at delaying what most thought was inevitable defeat for the agreement’s foes turned out to be a well-thought-out tactic involving betrayal of the accord by supposed supporters.

According to diplomats and some Assembly members, Belizaire and Sen. Serge Gilles were responsible. Gilles, previously a major backer of the accord, left the debate, about two hours before the others stalked out, claiming to be ill. However, it was his absence that broke the quorum.

Belizaire had a chance to keep the session going when he first announced that despite the walkout, enough members remained for a quorum. Then, without explanation, he called for a recount and announced there weren’t enough members on hand to conduct business.

Most of the plan’s opponents were carrying out what diplomats and others said was their end of a business deal. “They had been paid to oppose and they gave full value,” said one diplomat.