U.S. Moves to Stifle Haitian Exodus : Refugees: Coast Guard, Navy dispatch flotilla to area after officials warn of possible surge of boat people. Clinton team backs move.

The Bush Administration announced Friday that a large flotilla of Coast Guard and Navy vessels will be sent to waters off Haiti to prevent a mass exodus of boat people hoping to win asylum in the United States after President-elect Bill Clinton’s inauguration.

The Coast Guard said it will have 12 large cutters, five 100-foot patrol boats, 12 Falcon jets and several helicopters surrounding the island by early next week. In addition, five Navy ships--a destroyer, two frigates and two floating dry docks--will provide support.

The move was in response to fears of a mass exodus of Haitians in response to Clinton’s 1992 campaign promise to grant them temporary asylum until democracy is restored in the Caribbean nation.

U.S. intelligence agencies have warned that Haitians have built some 1,400 small boats that could accommodate as many as 150,000 people.

Clinton sought to discourage some of them Thursday when he backed away from his pledge and announced that he intended to at least temporarily continue the Bush Administration’s current policy, under which refugees who try to emigrate are forcibly returned to Haiti.

On Friday, Clinton’s spokesman, George Stephanopoulos, called the effort “simply a contingency plan worked out with the Coast Guard . . . to make sure that in the event that there is some sort of mass exodus, we have the ships in place to handle it.

“This was all part of the consultation process,” he said, “but it’s a decision by the Coast Guard and the armed forces in place right now.”

U.S. officials described the increase in patrols--which was worked out jointly by the Clinton transition team and the State Department--as a humanitarian move, designed to discourage Haitians from setting sail, lest their boats capsize.

The Coast Guard is believed to have about half a dozen cutters and patrol boats on duty near Haiti now. The Navy said none of its vessels currently is patrolling the area.

Coast Guard officials said refugee vessels will be forcibly stopped if necessary, although U.S. ships will not resort to use of weapons. But they said experience has shown that most boats leaving Haiti with refugees are so fragile and unseaworthy that passengers usually are thankful to be rescued by the time U.S. vessels actually intercept them.

“The boats are usually near capsizing, and the people are usually dehydrated--the occupants themselves know they need help,” Capt. Ernie Blanchard, a spokesman at the Coast Guard’s headquarters here, said Friday.

Spokesmen for Haitian advocacy groups immediately denounced the move as inadequate, and they questioned contentions by Bush and Clinton policy-makers that a huge exodus of Haitian refugees was imminent.

Michael Ratner, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said Friday he had just returned from a six-day visit to Haiti and had seen “no evidence” that the island had enough boats to carry 150,000 refugees. “I don’t know where that’s coming from,” he said.

Ratner also charged that Clinton has been “sold a bill of goods” on suggestions that Haitians would rather flee than rebuild their democracy. Instead of blockading refugee boats, he said, the United States should enforce the Organization of American States’ economic sanctions against the current regime.

Adm. J. William Kime, the commandant of the Coast Guard, said at a press conference in Miami that the enlarged flotilla would be stationed 12 miles off the island’s coast--the start of international waters, where the United States does not need Haiti’s permission to patrol or intercept vessels.

The deployment will last for a period of several weeks to several months, officials said.

Officials emphasized, however, that all Haitians who are intercepted will be returned to Haiti and not ferried to some U.S. military base, such as the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as they were during a similar exodus in 1991.

The Navy said the facility at Guantanamo Bay would be used to refuel Coast Guard and Navy vessels but would not be used to house refugees.

The Guantanamo Bay facility is currently housing some 274 Haitians who are being quarantined because they have found to be HIV-positive. Their status is expected to remain uncertain until U.S. courts decide whether to return them to Haiti.

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and the State Department’s consular service said they have no plans to increase staffing at the U.S. Embassy at Port-au-Prince, Haiti, despite Clinton’s pledge to speed up the processing of applications for refugee status.

A spokesman for the consular service said the agency has not yet changed any of its plans in the wake of the President-elect’s statement.

Kime said both Clinton and Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the deposed Haitian president-in-exile, are expected to broadcast radio messages urging Haitians to stay home and rebuild their country. News of the Coast Guard deployment will be broadcast to Haiti by the Voice of America, he added.

“We do hope there will be some deterrent,” the commandant said.

Aristide on Friday formally unveiled to the Organization of American States a three-stage plan to restore democracy in Haiti, beginning with an OAS-U.N. observer mission and agreements to end the violence and appoint a new prime minister.

The United Nations has dispatched an observer team to Haiti to explore prospects for a settlement, but few analysts are optimistic that a compromise can be worked out very quickly. Aristide has grudgingly backed Clinton’s move as an interim measure.

The Coast Guard has intercepted about 40,000 Haitians since 1981, when an earlier Haitian exodus resulted in hundreds of drownings near Florida and the Bahamas.

Times staff writer Pine reported from Washington and Clary, a special correspondent, reported from Miami.

Haiti Blockade

The U.S. Coast Guard has sent a force to encircle Haiti and repel the flow of refugee vessels. Source: U.S. Coast Guard