U.S. Expected to Call for Airtight Haiti Embargo

The Clinton Administration, joined by France, Canada and Venezuela, is expected to urge the U.N. Security Council early next week to impose an almost airtight ban on trade with Haiti, substantially toughening a petroleum embargo that already has shredded the nation’s economy, officials said Thursday.

Officials of the United States and its three allies have concluded that the additional sanctions are needed to force the Haitian military to permit ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to regain the office he lost in a bloody 1991 coup.

Although the four nations, collectively known as the “Four Friends of the U.N. Secretary-General Regarding Haiti,” threatened additional sanctions more than a month ago, they have been reluctant to take the step because of the devastating effect the trade embargo is sure to have on the country’s poorest citizens.

But representatives of the Four Friends, meeting in Washington, decided late Wednesday that the additional measures are required to coerce the Haitian military and its commander, Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, to stand aside and allow Aristide, the country’s only democratically elected chief executive, to regain power.

Meanwhile, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control froze the U.S. bank accounts and other assets of all Haitian military officers. The names of 523 officers were added to a list of 41 individuals whose assets were frozen last October. But Treasury officials said the sanctions apply to all officers, whether or not they are included on the new list.

In another step aimed directly at the military, the U.S. Embassy in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, announced Wednesday that the U.S. government has revoked the entry visas of all Haitian army officers.

A State Department official said that the decision on new sanctions by representatives of the Four Friends must be ratified at the top levels of all four governments, a process expected to take several days. The official said that if all goes as planned, the four countries will ask the Security Council early next week to ban all commercial trade with Haiti--both exports and imports--and to prohibit non-commercial airplane flights between the beleaguered country and the rest of the world.

In effect, the plan would add the weight of the Security Council to a trade embargo imposed by the Organization of American States only days after the September, 1991, coup.

The sweeping OAS embargo proved to be largely ineffective because it covered only countries of the Western Hemisphere and contained no enforcement provisions. In contrast, a binding resolution of the Security Council would include all nations and would be far more difficult to evade.

The Security Council banned trade in petroleum and arms last November after Cedras and his supporters failed to keep an agreement, signed in July on Governors Island in New York harbor, to restore Aristide to office by Oct. 30.

Although a few leaks have occurred in the oil and weapons embargo, the sanctions have devastated the Haitian economy. Even the military and its affluent supporters--generally immune to the rigors of the Caribbean nation’s poverty--have felt the impact.

Nevertheless, U.S. officials conceded that the country’s poor have been the hardest hit. Although the embargo excepts food and medicine, private relief organizations have had to curtail their efforts because of the fuel shortage.

U.S.-based CARE International had to halt food deliveries for a month until it received fuel earlier this month from a special humanitarian shipment, the Associated Press reported from Port-au-Prince. The number of Haitians who got their main daily meal from CARE--up to 580,000 last year--has plunged to 117,000, said Chris Conrad, CARE’s country director.

“We have very, very limited options right now,” said Conrad, adding that some shipments resumed Wednesday. “The more the crisis continues, the more limited our options are.”

U.S. officials said that a general embargo, although potentially more devastating in the short run, will increase the pressure on the military and should hasten the return of democracy.