At U.N., Aristide Makes Clear He Won’t Return to Haiti Till Foe Resigns : Caribbean: The ousted president says he doesn’t want to risk bloodshed. But the tone of his speech is defiant.

Ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, despite a defiant speech to the U.N. General Assembly, made it clear Thursday that he will not risk a bloody confrontation by returning to Haiti as scheduled Saturday unless the general who deposed him leaves office first.

Asked if he intended to return, Aristide told a news conference, “I must say, yes, I am prepared, I am ready.” But he quickly reminded the reporters that his nemesis, Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, the army commander, had failed to carry out his pledge and resign two weeks ago. Until that happens, Aristide implied, there will not be enough security in Haiti to allow his return.

Police estimated that 5,000 Haitian-Americans and Haitian exiles assembled outside the U.N. complex in New York to demonstrate their support for the deposed president as he addressed the 184 members of the General Assembly.

There have been pressures on Aristide to offer some kind of compromise that would placate Cedras and other military and police officers and induce them to carry out the U.N.-brokered agreement that promised their departure. That agreement, once hailed as the hope for Haiti, was signed by Aristide and Cedras on Governors Island in New York Harbor last July 3.

But the flowery rhetoric of Aristide, in both his speech and his news conference, offered little hint of compromise. In fact, the 39-year-old Roman Catholic priest, deposed by the army in 1991 only nine months after taking office, called for a strengthening of the sanctions against the military through a total trade blockade of his island republic.

The Haitian president refused to give in to a military demand that he ask the Parliament immediately to enact a general amnesty for officers involved in the coup and the terrorism afterward. But Aristide did say, “If, tomorrow morning, Gen. Cedras and members of his high command and (Port-au-Prince Police Chief Lt.) Col. (Michel-Joseph) Francois and his allies leave, then that same day, in the afternoon, I will convene the Parliament to vote a law on amnesty.”

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Asked if he would expand his government to include followers of Cedras, Aristide, who spoke in French, replied, “In English, I would say, “Garbage!’ ” Aristide did promise, however, that he would be the president of all Haitians and would encourage Haitians of different political stripes to create “unity in their diversity.” He said that the doors of his government would open not “to criminal elements but to democratic elements.”

The U.N. representative in Haiti, Dante Caputo, reportedly has suggested, as a possible compromise, expanding the government of Aristide’s prime minister, Robert Malval, to include some Aristide opponents.

At a morning news conference in Washington, President Clinton hinted that the United States would support bolder sanctions.

Singling out Police Chief Francois, who is accused of sending out plainclothesmen known as attaches to rain terror on Aristide supporters, Clinton said, “If Mr. Francois and others in Haiti believe that all they have to do is to wait out Aristide and everything will somehow be all right, and that the international community will put up with the re-establishment of a Duvalier-like regime there in plain violation of the overwhelming majority of the people of Haiti, I think they are just wrong.

“The people down there that are thwarting democracy’s return have got to decide whether they want to hold on tight to a shrinking future or take a legitimate and proportionate share of an expanding future,” Clinton went on.

“It is their decision. But I think they are making a grave mistake. And we are looking at what our other options are.”

Clinton did not say what these options were, but he told reporters that he and his aides had held a 40-minute meeting to discuss them.

When it became obvious last week that Cedras and Francois were violating the Governors Island accord, the Security Council reimposed an oil and arms embargo on Haiti. Since that has failed to sway Cedras and Francois, American and other diplomats have been considering a total trade embargo and a ban on air travel to the Caribbean country.

In the U.N. speech, Aristide asked Prime Minister Malval and his Cabinet to remain in office rather than resign as they had threatened to do. Malval quickly announced in the capital of Port-au-Prince that he would stay on.

Malval told American reporters: “I have heard the call. Of course, I’m here to keep up the fight for him. . . . I’m a soldier. I’m here to obey.”

Malval said the most important part of Aristide’s speech was his statement expressing willingness to convene Parliament to pass an amnesty law demanded by the military.

“This is the first time the president has mentioned this,” Malval said. “This is something new and important.”

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Aristide’s opponents were less enthusiastic, saying that the president should resign for requesting a total blockade. “That’s a crime,” said Emanuel Constant, the secretary general of the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti.

Constant, whose group is a leading civilian front for the military, said that “civil disorders are likely in the next few days” and that he was supporting a strike today by transit workers to protest the embargo. Constant said he hoped the strike will be peaceful but could give no guarantees.

Just before Aristide delivered his speech, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter pulled up to dock in Port-au-Prince and unloaded 28 Haitians intercepted while trying to reach Florida in a wooden boat. As in a repatriation the day before, the press was kept away.

At his news conference, Aristide said that since the United Nations cannot retrain the military and police until Cedras leaves, Haiti is not safe for anyone, including himself.

His speech to the General Assembly also had the tone of a campaign speech, brimming with promises of a better life for Haitians once he returned to power.

He promised, for example, “We will no longer have one soldier for every thousand inhabitants and only 1.8 doctors for every 10,000. We will no longer have an army of 7,000 men absorbing 40% of the national budget. The quality of life will be better.”

Once democracy is restored, he went on, there will be no repeat of the “massive flow of boat people” to the United States.

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Times staff writers Kenneth Freed in Port-au-Prince and David Lauter in Washington contributed to this report.