Clinton Favors Compromise for Crisis in Haiti

President Clinton on Monday embraced a compromise advanced by political opponents of ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide as U.S., U.N. and other mediators searched for ways to resolve the island nation’s leadership crisis without more violence and assassinations.

In the Haitian capital, U.N. envoy Dante Caputo appealed to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and other out-of-office elected leaders from the Western Hemisphere to congregate in the capital of Port-au-Prince this week to act as high-level human rights monitors, whose presence might discourage political killings and offer increased safety to Haitian Parliament members and Aristide’s supporters.

Aristide, who has insisted that he intends to return to Haiti on Saturday to reclaim the presidency under the terms of a tattered peace plan signed last July, will address the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday to appeal for continued international support, U.N. officials said in New York.

Clinton, talking to reporters after meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, said his hopes for a settlement were raised by a proposal advanced this weekend by a group of Haitian legislators who previously had opposed Aristide’s return.

The 11-point plan calls for the president to regain his office provided that he broadens his government to include some political opponents and that Parliament passes legislation assuring coup leaders that they will not be punished. The plan also calls on Parliament to enact a law establishing a police force separate from the army. The police now are part of the military Establishment.

“It’s always hazardous to be hopeful about Haiti, but I do believe that some of the signs over the weekend were hopeful, that there was some outreach, some understanding that there has to be an accommodation here,” Clinton said. “And that is hopeful to me.”

Aristide and his supporters have resisted calls for him to broaden the base of his government by giving Cabinet posts to some elected members of Parliament who have been political opponents but were not implicated in the bloody military coup that ousted him in September, 1991.

So far, pro-Aristide lawmakers have not indicated if they will go along with the latest proposal.

A radical Roman Catholic priest, Aristide is the only freely elected president in Haiti’s history and had served only nine months before he was overthrown.

He and the army’s chief, Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, agreed July 3 on a plan calling for Aristide to regain power Saturday. But the military defied the accord’s most important preliminary steps when Cedras and other coup leaders refused to step aside as required Oct. 15, and a band of pro-army thugs prevented U.N. military advisers from taking up positions in the country.

Prime Minister Robert Malval, who heads a civilian government appointed by Aristide, met Monday for the second time in three days with Cedras, presumably to establish conditions under which the army would allow Aristide to return.

There are some indications that the plan advanced by opposition politicians may have had its origin in the Malval-Cedras talks, although neither side would confirm it.

Although the army has not officially endorsed the plan, it said in a statement read over Haitian radio that it “remains open to any proposition which would lead to a peaceful transition.”

In an interview on Cable News Network in Port-au-Prince, Caputo urged Carter, former presidents Raul Alfonsin of Argentina and Julio Maria Sanguinetti of Uruguay and former prime ministers Brian Mulroney of Canada and Michael Manley of Jamaica to visit Haiti to become “a sort of protection--a shield--against these threats” by military-backed thugs against members of Parliament and Aristide himself, if he goes through with plans to return.

Such thugs assassinated Malval’s justice minister, Guy Malary, on Oct. 14, and in September a key Aristide supporter, businessman Antoine Izmery, was dragged from a church during Mass and killed.

Referring to the army and its civilian backers, Caputo said: “We have many reasons to believe that, as they violated the agreement before, they can do it again.

“So, it is important for us to have all these witnesses from the international community . . . to see exactly if the military in this country” is ready to keep its pledge to transfer power back to Aristide, Caputo said.

The assumption behind the plan is that the army would not strike while such a prestigious group of foreigners was in the country because of fear that the United States, Argentina, Canada or other countries would retaliate. Lower-level U.N. human rights observers were withdrawn earlier this month out of concern for their safety.

None of the leaders commented immediately on Caputo’s proposal. In Atlanta, Carter’s spokeswoman, Carrie Harmon, told the Associated Press that she was aware of Caputo’s appeal. She said Carter has not heard directly from Caputo or the United Nations.

Caputo said the first job of the international observers would be to make members of Parliament feel safe enough to convene and consider legislation intended to speed Aristide’s return.

The Parliament has not met in recent days because of death threats from pro-military gangs, known as “attaches.”

Although Aristide continues to insist that he intends to return home, the Clinton Administration doubts that he will do so, at least not for the time being.

Military leaders and their wealthy civilian supporters hate and fear Aristide, a populist whose political stronghold is the island’s impoverished majority. However, the army is constrained by an economic embargo imposed by the U.N. Security Council and enforced by a picket line of naval ships from the United States, Canada and Argentina.

Cedras negotiated and signed the July agreement at Governors Island in New York Harbor because an earlier embargo had made the island nation virtually ungovernable.

U.S. and U.N. officials hope that the renewed embargo will again force Cedras to compromise.