NEWS ANALYSIS : Haiti’s New Leader Is Showing He Can’t End Repression, Corruption : Caribbean: Bazin promised action to end nation’s crisis. Without results, he may not be able to gain international credibility.

When Marc Bazin took office two weeks ago as the Haitian military’s latest imposed prime minister, he assured friends and enemies that they could forget the months of manipulation and duplicity that got him into office. Instead, he said he would end corruption and repression and would negotiate an end to his nation’s crisis.

But to his enemies, home-grown and foreign, and even to some of his friends, Bazin’s version of the old American political maxim “Watch what I do, not what I say” is not working out. He is saying less and less and doing nothing.

“Bazin led everyone to think he would produce immediate results,” said a private economist who once worked for Bazin when he served a short term as finance minister. “Well, he’s shown he can’t end the corruption or the repression because the army won’t let him, and that means he’ll never gain the international credibility and respect that will enable him to negotiate” a political settlement.

At issue, as it has been since Sept. 30 when the army overthrew Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, is the restoration here of constitutional government, including the return of its exiled chief of state. The military has refused this demand, even in the face of a crushing international embargo that includes a ban on all international financial aid.

Throughout the crisis, Bazin played every side, first criticizing the coup, then supporting it; once seeming to support plans by Washington and the Organization of American States to end the crisis, later doing all he could to sabotage an agreement.

Bazin’s posturing, which even had him claiming support from Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, led American officials to label Bazin “the main obstacle to a settlement” and to publicly insult him.

Yet Bazin won approval as prime minister because he assured the military and its wealthy business supporters that he still had influential Washington support that would enable him to get financial assistance and still keep Aristide out of the country.

So, although he had said both publicly and in interviews that he was opposed to the return of Aristide as president, Bazin announced in his acceptance speech that he was willing to meet Aristide “anytime, anywhere” to negotiate a settlement.

“The idea,” said another analyst once close to Bazin, “was to give the impression of reasonableness by seeming to reach out unconditionally. But he knew that Aristide could never accept such an offer.”

As clear as the Bazin tactic may be to some, it did change the political equation in Washington. “We don’t know whether to believe him or not,” one U.S. official said.

Asked why Washington now even considers believing a man who last April was the subject of a visit by a senior State Department aide whose intent was to insult him to make the point that Washington would never accept him as prime minister, the U.S. official replied: “The only way to tell is to engage him.”

On the surface, this “test” was the reason for one of the oddest twists in recent U.S. tactics, a statement that Bazin’s statement was reasonable and that Aristide was being stubborn and bears a large “responsibility” for the impasse in settlement negotiations. This pressure led Aristide to move slightly from his long-stated objection to any meeting with Bazin. “If they welcome me home tomorrow,” Aristide said, “I’ll be there to talk.”

But while Aristide said he would meet with Bazin, he said he would do so only “once he resigns.” Aristide added the condition that any talks would have to be preceded by the presence in Haiti of an OAS civilian monitoring force “reinforced by the United Nations.”

Haitian sources, as well as diplomats interviewed last week, all agreed that both sides were bluffing; in any case, neither Bazin nor Aristide could deliver on any agreement to meet.

“Bazin can’t last three months if he tries to accomplish his program,” said a Haitian businessman who once supported the new prime minister. “Even if he isn’t serious about Aristide, and I know he isn’t, the army won’t let him fight corruption or end repression.”

Nearly all sources said that Bazin holds office only because of the military and can remain in office only if they let him. His dependence on the army and his weakness in the face of the military were evident even before he took office.

Sources close to Bazin said the army forced him to double the size of his 12-member Cabinet to give portfolios to allies of army officers. He was then told the names of the ministers he had to appoint to critical Cabinet positions, namely those controlling the police, defense, public works and agriculture.

The sources said that when Bazin said he would also hold the Finance Ministry portfolio, Michael Francois, an army colonel and Port-au-Prince’s police chief, disagreed and ordered him to appoint one of Francois’ cronies to the post.

“That was to tell him that there would be no civilian control and no tolerance of efforts to cut back on corruption,” one European diplomat said.

Meanwhile, Aristide remains a prisoner of his own supporters--particularly a radical group known as Lavalas, from a Creole word for flood.

“If word ever got around of any move by Aristide to negotiate with Bazin, it would be seen as a betrayal,” said one of the ousted president’s major allies still in Haiti. Another Aristide supporter observed, “To meet with Bazin would be to recognize him as prime minister, and that would be the same as accepting the coup.”

Aristide seems in no hurry to end the crisis, even in the face of the increased instability and the worsening economic situation, which actually hurts his supporters--ordinary Haitians--more than his enemies. He has called for stiffening the economic embargo, and his supposedly concessionary proposals to come back here for talks were made with the foreknowledge that the military would never agree.

The U.S. position is shrouded in conflicting currents and contradictory actions. From the outset, Washington’s policy has been to restore Aristide to office in furtherance of the principle that the overthrow of constitutional governments cannot be tolerated. Opposing this view, some U.S. officials say, is the feeling that Aristide is essentially anti-democratic and anti-American and that the “pain to the United States” in the current situation is becoming intolerable.

The discomforts to the United States include the thorny problems posed by thousands of Haitians trying to migrate illegally to the United States; the inability to get international cooperation with the U.S.- and OAS-sponsored embargo, and the concern that prolonging the situation will end in catastrophe, with thousands of Haitians dying from famine and epidemics just a few hundred miles from Florida.

There is also growing worry that Aristide may not really care about returning to Haiti, if doing so involves any compromise on his part; U.S. officials have been leaking reports that the ousted president has been looking for a Washington house worth $1 million or more.

Then there is just plain frustration that Washington has failed for now to accomplish any of its goals in Haiti. American officials feel that Aristide is trying to set U.S. policy, that he wants a veto even if Washington decides something contrary is in Americans’ interests and even though he has had nine months of staunch U.S. support. Privately, U.S. officials express the belief that, at best, Aristide has not been helpful.