Militant Haitian Front Demands Aristide Quit

A civilian front group for Haiti’s military on Friday demanded the resignation of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and said a provisional government will be named until new national elections can be called.

The group’s stand drew warnings from U.N. special envoy Dante Caputo that the appointment of a provisional government “would be a flagrant violation” of the July 3 Governors Island agreement that called for army commander Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras to resign by Oct. 15 and the president to come home today.

In a news conference, the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, an armed organization that acts politically for the military, said Aristide, the country’s only democratically elected president, must quit by tonight or his office will be declared vacant.

“If Aristide is a president who loves his country, he will resign by midnight Oct. 30,” said the group’s secretary general, Emanuel Constant, at a raucous and sometimes frightening news conference during which threats were shouted against the lives of Aristide and others.

If Aristide does not resign, said Constant, the son of a former commander in the army of the late dictator Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier, FRAPH, as the group calls itself, “will take matters into its own hands.”

“With or without the help of Parliament,” Constant said, an interim government will be named and elections called “within 90 days.” Asked about the military’s position, Constant said, “We will do our job and I believe the military will do its job.”

FRAPH is widely believed to have fomented the violence that prevented a U.S. military ship from docking in Haiti on Oct. 11.

Port-au-Prince was generally quiet as Constant held his press conference. FRAPH called a transit strike for Friday to protest the international embargo on petroleum, and then turned it into a general strike that shut down the capital, closed schools and offices and drove people off the streets.

Constant’s words were accompanied by a chorus of frenetic supporters shouting for “the death of Aristide,” “the death of (pro-Aristide Prime Minister Robert) Malval” and “the death of Caputo.”

While Constant asserted that his way “is the only way back to democracy,” Caputo told another group of reporters that he is seeking a meeting early next week between representatives of Aristide and Cedras to “remove roadblocks” to a solution of Haiti’s crisis.

Despite Caputo’s insistence that “this is not at all a renegotiation of the agreement,” Haitian sources immediately branded that position a surrender.

“This was exactly what Cedras and his allies had been seeking” through delays and outright violations of the Governors Island pact, one Haitian political analyst said. “He (Cedras) thinks that he can get new terms that will make Aristide’s return meaningless.”

According to sources close to Cedras, his strategy has been to so weaken Aristide and his supporters that new negotiations would be held, causing Aristide to refuse to return, or to return without power.

Nevertheless, Caputo, who held his news conference in a shut-down hotel because of security concerns, said letters would go out Friday following his call for “urgent talks to be held to resolve all the problems associated” with the Governors Island agreement.

He said he expected responses within 24 to 48 hours and that talks could be held in Haiti on Monday or Tuesday, which are holidays celebrating “the days of the dead.”

Malval aides said the prime minister would accept Caputo’s invitation. But they dismissed its importance, saying, “What we need are deeds, not more words.”

One assistant called Caputo’s move “ridiculous.”

Caputo said the new talks would focus on four areas of the Governors Island accord.

First would be the return of a U.N. military and police mission assigned to build roads, reform the Haitian army and create a new police force.

Second would be passage by Haiti’s legislature of a bill separating the army and police, and an act extending a general amnesty to the military and civilians who carried out and supported the overthrow of Aristide.

The final two points are those over which the agreement collapsed: the resignation of Cedras and the return of Aristide.

Caputo, who in his nine months as U.N. special envoy has been frequently outmaneuvered by Cedras, said that if all fails again, the United Nations “would have no alternative but . . . to strengthen sanctions.”

With a flotilla of warships already surrounding Haiti to enforce a severe economic embargo, about all the United Nations can do is reduce even further the goods permitted to enter, mostly food, medicine and cooking oil.

“We are already suffering,” Constant said in an interview. “What more can they do--just make more poor people suffer.”

For all the talk of forced resignations, new elections, tightened sanctions and yet more rounds of talks, little was changed by Friday’s dueling news conferences.

“The embargo is on,” said the Haitian analyst, “the ships are still out there, we are running out of gasoline and Aristide and democracy remain in exile.”

There have been other provisional governments since Aristide’s ouster, he said. “But the fact is, this won’t change anything. Most of Haiti believes Aristide is president, and it will not matter what puppet they put in the National Palace.”

Others expressed a more defeatist attitude.

“The score, you want to know the score,” said a diplomat asked about the inconclusive efforts to force Aristide’s return. “Today, it’s army 4, the international community nothing,” he said, counting the failed efforts to restore Haitian democracy since Aristide was turned out of office in a bloody coup Sept. 30, 1991.

“We have won,” concurred Raynaud Georges, a virulent foe of Aristide who is associated with FRAPH and other groups. “If Aristide ever comes back, we will arrest him.”

So confident are Aristide’s enemies that they have ordered the presidential office and living quarters in the National Palace cleaned for a new occupant, whom they expect to name in the coming days.

In Washington, President Clinton, who spoke Friday with both Aristide and Malval, offered no specific U.S. action but promised continued U.S. pressure on Haiti’s military leaders until Aristide is returned. He pledged U.S. economic aid to help restore the economy of the impoverished nation once the elected president is back in power.

Clinton welcomed Caputo’s call for renewed talks to attempt to revive the Governors Island accord. “The Haitian military and police leaders must not delude themselves into thinking they have destroyed the Governors Island process,” Clinton said. “President Aristide must be allowed to return home to the Haitian people who elected him by a landslide.”

However, a senior State Department official said the United States opposes renegotiation of the core issues decided at Governors Island--Aristide’s restoration to power and the resignation of Cedras. He said other matters, such as the timing of Aristide’s return, could be discussed.

Clinton said the United States will support tighter sanctions against Haiti. But State Department spokesman Mike McCurry explained that the Administration is reluctant to take that step before exhausting other options, saying that imposition of additional restrictions will make it even more difficult to avoid a severe impact on the average Haitian.

“Sanctions are a blunt instrument, and as you widen the sanctions, you make it even more blunt,” McCurry said.

McCurry said the armada enforcing the sanctions intercepted late Thursday the Condor, a freighter registered in Cyprus, which was found to be carrying 21 military vehicles with machine-gun mounts despite a manifest that listed only humanitarian goods and auto parts. The ship was ordered away from Haiti and went, instead, to Panama.

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