Christopher Ties Haiti Sanctions to Aristide OK of Coalition

Secretary of State Warren Christopher, underlining a growing friction between the Clinton Administration and ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, said Wednesday that the United States will not seek new economic sanctions against Haiti’s military rulers unless Aristide agrees to name a coalition government.

Christopher told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that it would be pointless to tighten the embargo against Haiti until Aristide accepts a practical political plan to restore democracy to the impoverished Caribbean country.

Although the Administration has been trying for more than a week to persuade Aristide to endorse a coalition government plan advanced by a group of Haitian politicians, Christopher was the first official to link the plan to new economic sanctions. Previously, Administration spokesmen had said that Washington would impose the sanctions regardless of whether Aristide endorsed the compromise proposal.

Diplomats from the United States, France, Canada and Venezuela have been discussing a draft of a sanctions resolution with members of the U.N. Security Council for weeks. The four countries agreed in December to seek stronger sanctions if the military government of Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras did not step aside to permit Aristide to regain the office he lost in a bloody coup in September, 1991.

But Christopher said Wednesday that the United States is wary of tougher sanctions because they would increase suffering in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country.

His remarks seemed to plunge relations between the Administration and Aristide to a new low. U.S. officials are becoming increasingly impatient with what they consider Aristide’s inflexibility. For his part, Aristide, the only freely elected president in Haiti’s history, is said to believe that the Administration has lost interest in helping him regain his lost office.

“We believe that sanctions can add a good deal of pressure,” Christopher said. “We think that they are most effective, though, when they are moving toward some political result. At the present time . . . there is no plan that we can be promoting effectively with the sanctions.”

Christopher said that the coalition government plan, advanced by eight Haitian parliamentarians whom he called a “developing centrist group,” offers the best chance of restoring democracy to Haiti. The plan calls for Aristide to name a new prime minister who could form a coalition civilian government to clear the way for Aristide’s eventual return to office.

Aristide flatly rejected the proposal, saying it contains no guarantee that he would ever be able to return to power. Aristide’s camp is also concerned that the plan would require him to share power with a prime minister.

Aristide and Cedras signed an agreement last summer on Governors Island in New York Harbor that was supposed to restore the ousted president by Oct. 30. However, the military leaders refused to keep their promise to step down.

Aristide’s Washington lawyer, former Rep. Michael Barnes (D-Md.), said that the proposal advanced by the parliamentarians “is much weaker than what was agreed to at Governors Island.”

Barnes called on the Security Council to vote for new sanctions to force the army to keep the agreements it made at Governors Island.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) said the Administration’s new policy places too much reliance on the goodwill of the military leaders who staged the coup.

“It seems to me we are putting pressure on the wrong party here,” Dodd told Christopher.

Meanwhile, Aristide announced plans to address international human rights conferences in Paris on Sunday and in Geneva on Wednesday in an effort to generate new pressure on the military regime.

At the United Nations, a spokesman said that Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, trying to break the impasse, has invited Aristide to New York, presumably to discuss the parliamentarians’ plan.

Times staff writer Stanley Meisler contributed to this report.