If Haiti’s Out of Gas, What’s in Tanks of the Elite? : Sanctions: Officially, petrol supplies have dried up. But rich motorists still take their weekend trips.

This country ran out of gasoline Thursday, the Haitian government said. But as with many things the government says, that wasn’t quite true.

According to Commerce Minister Saidel Laine, “the reserves of automobile gasoline of the petroleum companies operating in Haiti are exhausted” as a result of an international economic embargo aimed at forcing an end to the nation’s 23-month-old political crisis.

However, Haiti is never what it seems, and running out of gasoline here is not quite the same as it would be elsewhere.

There is no doubt the crisis is having an impact. There are cars parked every which way by the roadside, abandoned where they ran out of fuel. And Port-au-Prince’s usually crammed streets are now free enough of competing vehicles that a driver can pay more attention to car-eating potholes than to avoiding head-on crashes.

And the foreign relief organizations that are already stretched to their limits trying to keep millions of Haitians from starving face new, nearly insurmountable obstacles to the delivery of supplies in areas without fuel.

But the people who count here are having none of that. In the wealthy areas of Petionville and Pacot and Kennscoff, silk-suited businessmen and their bejeweled wives drive their Mercedeses and BMWs to fashion shows, cocktails and restaurant dinners of lamb chops and champagne.

“I have to tell you,” said a downtown businessman, “I’m going to pack up the pickup and go to the mountains for the weekend. The beaches are going to be too crowded.”

The nearest beach acceptable to the Haitian elite is at least an hour’s drive from Port-au-Prince.

How can a country that officially has run out of gasoline in the face of an international boycott still function?

For one thing, only supplies of ordinary gasoline are supposedly gone; enough diesel stocks remain to fill the vehicles most favored by Haiti’s behind-the-scenes military rulers and their elite civilian allies.

And, it turns out, the stores of ordinary gasoline are not quite as empty as advertised. Far-sighted folks have saved some fuel, and the military still has what the generals describe as their “strategic stock” of ordinary gasoline.

They have, in the words of Commerce Minister Laine, made plans “to furnish gasoline to a certain number of institutions in both the public and private sectors.”

This is supposed to mean a rationing system to provide fuel to hospitals, ambulances and other essential institutions. In reality, according to a Petionville attorney who does not want his name mentioned, it means that “those with connections and money will get what they need.”

Then there is the gasoline-besotted goat.

According to a story circulating here, much of the army’s gasoline reserves were being kept in a sealed storage tank rented from the family of Fritz Mevs, perhaps Haiti’s richest man. Mevs was a major supporter of the September, 1991, military coup that set off the current crisis by overthrowing Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country’s first democratically elected president.

That much has been confirmed. What remains open to speculation is the rest of a story provided by two highly connected and well-informed Haitian political figures.

By their account, the military checked the tank a few days ago and found the seal broken and some 200,000 gallons of gasoline missing. The Mevses were said to have claimed that a goat had eaten the seal and that they had no idea what happened to the missing gasoline.

Wherever that gasoline went, and no matter how much has been hoarded or how certain the military and the elite are that they can weather the shortage, experts say that at best Haiti truly will be totally out of fuel of all kinds within three weeks--”unless.”

That “unless” is the will of Haiti’s competing political and economic interests to carry out a month-old agreement aimed at ending the economic sanctions quickly and guaranteeing Aristide’s return from exile by Oct. 30.

By the accord worked out under the mediation of the United Nations, most of the embargo, including that on fuel, will end when the nation’s National Assembly ratifies the nomination and political program of Robert Malval. He is the respected, politically moderate publisher named by Aristide to be his new prime minister.

That step was expected this week. But the legislators have bogged down in delays that they claim are procedural but that many diplomats and other sources see as last-ditch efforts by Aristide’s foes to sabotage his return--or at least seriously weaken his ability to govern.

The earliest Malval’s ratification can be expected, according to most experts, is the middle of next week, probably even later.

Diplomats and petroleum company officials say that whenever Malval is sworn in and the boycott is lifted, it will still take five to seven more days before fuel tankers will arrive and unload their cargo.