Haiti President Confident of His Return to Power : Caribbean: Ousted leader Aristide says embargo will bring back democracy. But he acknowledges sanctions will hurt nation’s poor.

Bolstered by the prospect of a U.N.-sponsored embargo of oil and arms to Haiti, ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide expressed confidence Thursday in his eventual return to power and the restoration of democracy in his homeland.

“It is already 20 months. It is enough,” Aristide said at a news conference in Hollywood a day after the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved the embargo. “We need a nonviolent, peaceful transition, and we are going to get that.”

Aristide acknowledged that a toughened economic embargo could cause suffering in an already devastated Haiti.

But he added that without the embargo, there would be little to force the leaders of the coup that ousted him in September, 1991, to end their rule.

“That would be worse,” said Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest and Haiti’s first democratically elected leader. “With sanctions, there will be a restoration of democracy and economic progress.”

The U.N. embargo is the latest development in an increasingly forceful international effort to return Aristide to power.

Two weeks earlier, the Clinton Administration clamped new travel and economic sanctions on about 200 of the principal supporters of the military-backed regime that took over.

One day before the U.N. vote, Haiti’s National Assembly attempted to avert new sanctions by formally recognizing the legitimacy of Aristide’s presidency. But it also imposed conditions on his return that would have rendered his presidency powerless. Aristide and his supporters rejected the proposal and the United Nations ignored it.

The U.N. embargo will come into force one minute after midnight June 23 unless Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali determines that the Haitian government has made significant progress toward reinstating Aristide.

Aristide said Thursday he expects that coup leaders will quickly submit once the embargo begins, although some observers believe the military has fuel stockpiles that could last for weeks or months.

In Washington, Jean Casimir, the Aristide appointee who is still recognized as Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, said he was “cautiously optimistic” that the sanctions would be effective.

He said that after Aristide is returned to power, the restored regime would welcome the 500 international police officers that the military government rejected.

Casimir said the international police could help reorganize the island’s own police force and reassure civilian supporters of the coup that there would be no reprisals.

Michael Barnes, a former Maryland congressman who serves as Aristide’s Washington lawyer, said the president is prepared to begin negotiations with the military government on the conditions for restoring democracy.

But he said Aristide will not discuss any other topics with them.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster, in Washington, contributed to this report.