Halt Deployment and Start Over : Haiti’s elite has reneged on the U.N. deal

If any further proof were needed that reinstalling ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide will not be easy, it was provided Monday by Haiti’s military government and its hired thugs, who so violently oppose Aristide that they are willing to defy both the United Nations and the United States to keep him out.

Now the United Nations, with Washington’s backing, must be prepared to up the ante to get Aristide home.

The latest standoff began when a mob, its actions orchestrated by Haitian police, prevented a U.S. Navy vessel from docking at Port-au-Prince to unload U.S. and Canadian military trainers in an effort to smooth Haiti’s transition to civilian government. The 200 troops aboard the Harlan County, which has now left Haiti, are virtually unarmed, yet Aristide’s opponents denounced them as invaders. A handful of U.S. diplomats and journalists on hand for the troops’ arrival were roughed up.

It is now obvious that the U.N. agreement negotiated last summer has fallen apart. Under its terms, Haiti’s military rulers had agreed to resign and allow Aristide, ousted in a 1991 coup, to return Oct. 30. The harassment and murder of Aristide supporters have again become commonplace; now even U.N. and U.S. officials are being threatened. The Haitian government either will not or cannot control the situation. In either case the United Nations and Washington have no option but to declare the Haitian peace accord null and void, and get back to the diplomatic and military drawing boards:

1. The Clinton Administration was wise to halt plans to deploy American military personnel in Haiti. The situation on the ground is clearly too dangerous to send in lightly armed troops. It probably goes without saying that the same risk would face Aristide, whose return should be postponed indefinitely.

2. The United Nations must reimpose the sanctions that brought the current Haitian government to the negotiating table earlier this year. That should include not just a ban on oil imports, which could bring Haiti to a halt in weeks, but a ban on commercial airline traffic, to prevent the small, wealthy elite from getting around the embargo by smuggling goods in.

3. As this tough U.N. embargo against Haiti grinds away, U.N. and U.S. military officials must prepare contingency plans for an eventual military intervention there, should that prove the only way to push Haiti’s thugs aside.

One hopes it will not come to that--but if it does, the military forces used must be well-prepared so that they can do the job quickly and then get out. Given Monday’s violence, planning for intervention is only prudent.