PERSPECTIVE ON U.S.-HAITI POLICY : Our Hocus-Pocus Does Great Harm : The swell of refugees is a direct response to the Bush Administration’s broken promises and betrayal of Aristide.

Haitians have always been poor. Yet during the brief tenure of Haiti’s first freely elected government last year, the number of refugees dwindled to the vanishing point. With the expectation that President Jean-Bertrand Aristide would bring in more than $500 million in aid, Haitians had good reason to stay and work for a less wretched future.

The flow of boat people resumed eight months ago, a direct consequence of the bloody coup that ousted Aristide and brought back to power the same anti-democratic elites that for decades had turned Haiti into a human and ecological disaster. That flow has since turned into a flood because the Haitians are convinced that the Bush Administration has reneged on its commitment to restore Aristide.

No competent observer can fail to grasp the fear that pervades Haiti. Our capable ambassador and embassy team admit that Haiti today suffers under an arbitrary and lawless regime. Yet at the same time they insist that those leaving in record numbers are not fleeing persecution.

This official position might carry more weight had not a recent congressional delegation learned that no embassy official had communicated with Jean-Claude Bajeux and other leading human-rights monitors over the last six months. Once the White House has pronounced its version of the truth, there is little incentive for a shorthanded embassy to report facts that contradict the official story.

In the immediate aftermath of the Haiti coup, the Bush foreign-policy team moved with confident professionalism. It got the Organization of American States to vote an embargo. President Bush received President Aristide in the White House and pledged that the coup would not stand. Assistant Secretary of State Bernard W. Aronson testified that there must be “a clear message from the OAS that there is a terrible price for overthrowing a democratically elected government.”

This bold, sound and sharply drawn policy had the potential to quickly restore Aristide. But then the Administration was challenged at its most vulnerable point. Thousands of poor, black Haitians began to descend on Florida. White House aides with elections on their minds panicked. They ordered the Coast Guard to smash the boats of the refugees and forcibly return them to Haiti, thereby telling the regime that the United States would not pay even a small price for its principles.

Next, the Administration unilaterally weakened the OAS embargo by caving in to pressures from business interests represented by former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams. With his major policy options shot out from under him, Aronson was reduced to trying to effect Aristide’s return by pressuring him to do the unacceptable: to confirm as commander of the army the same general who had overseen the coup.

Politicians may abolish the guts of a policy but never the policy itself. Presidents and secretaries leave to the career State Department the thankless job of trying to achieve policy objectives without adequate means. In the case of Haiti, the formulas devised do the profession of diplomacy little credit.

The diplomatic shell game that expected Aristide to reward the coup-maker soon took another, equally zany turn. In order to persuade the military and economic elites that it would be almost painless to put a democratic facade in place, the Administration put forward the theory that restoration of constitutional governance does not demand Aristide’s physical return but merely his “political” return, to be accomplished by his designating a prime minister satisfactory to the regime. No firm date would be set for his actual return.

As Rep. Charles B. Rangel has observed, the chief effect of this political hocus-pocus has been to induce the Haitian generals to tighten their hold on power and flaunt their contempt for the United States and its diplomatic representatives.

At a meeting last month of OAS foreign ministers, Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger gave some signs that the Administration may finally have grasped that the full return of Aristide and population stability in Haiti are inextricably linked. Eagleburger promised tougher measures against the military mafia, including a tightening of the embargo that will forbid access to U.S. ports for any ship caught trading with Haiti.

It is impossible, however, to revive a moribund policy with one strong speech from a deputy secretary. The President and secretary of state themselves must visibly focus on Haiti--not on the refugees, but on what caused them to flee: a repressive regime.

The quickest way to accomplish the return of democratic government is to send a high-level commission to Haiti that includes a military officer with the prestige of a Gen. Colin Powell. The commission would tell the generals that it is their misrule that propels ever-increasing numbers of refugees toward Florida. It would insist that they yield command to officers willing to work with Aristide. It would state that the United States will not only stringently enforce the embargo, but that stronger measures are not excluded.

The Bush Administration must stop dithering and move to restore Aristide. If it cannot summon up the courage to act, then the only alternative is to abolish the embargo, abandon Aristide and seek an accommodation with the gangster forces now in power.

It is morally indefensible to starve the people of Haiti in the name of a policy that seeks to restore democracy but cravenly refuses to adopt the measures necessary to achieve that goal.