U.S. Won’t Punish Key Civilian Supporters of Haitian Coup : Caribbean: White House will not revoke visas or freeze assets of wealthy families. Move is seen as a mixed signal.

The Clinton Administration has decided against punishing key civilian supporters of the military coup against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in what diplomats and Haitian experts say is yet another mixed signal about U.S. policy toward Haiti.

Acting on the recommendation of U.S. Ambassador William L. Swing, the White House will not revoke visas nor seek to freeze assets of the wealthy, powerful families who supported the Sept. 30, 1991, ouster of Aristide and have opposed his return, U.S. Embassy sources here said.

Those considered but rejected for American punitive actions include the Mev, Brandt, Acra and Madsen families.

One U.S. Embassy source said that Washington was advised not to include these elite Haitians because “they still have a role to play.”

This is the same rationale used to exclude the same families from earlier sanctions, although American officials at the time of the coup and in the months after labeled them as supporters of the military rebellion.

These elite “are seen as a way to reaching the military,” one Haitian expert here said. Some U.S. diplomats in the embassy “still believe no settlement is possible without their direct participation,” an American official said.

At the same time, at least three Haitian senators who have led the anti-Aristide movement--Thomas Eddy Dupiton, Dejean Belizaire and Bernard Sansari--will not have to relinquish their permanent U.S. residence status, which enables them to live and travel freely in the United States, the sources said.

The three senators, particularly Sansari, played key roles in recently installing Haiti’s civilian puppet government. He declared that Aristide had abandoned and betrayed his office and personally decreed that Supreme Court President Emile Jonassaint was the new president. The senators will not be challenged to give up their permanent residence status because it would require a long legal process in American courts with no guarantee of success, embassy officials said.

A diplomat, who called the American decisions “a decidedly mixed signal,” said they were bound to confuse Haitians. The Haitians face tough, new economic sanctions starting Sunday and repeated White House assertions that American military intervention remains an option.

“They are imposing sanctions designed to strangle the country into restoring Aristide at the same time they are telling the people who backed the coup and are in business with the military in keeping Aristide out that they are free to lead their privileged lives,” the diplomat said.

Other diplomatic and business sources here said President Clinton is considering another potentially confusing decision: They said Clinton may issue an executive order banning all passenger flights and financial transactions between Haiti and the United States.

Scheduled flights have been among the exceptions to the embargo. U.S. Embassy officials have said a total flight ban and even an end to humanitarian aid remain possible, if not probable. “The banning of all flights would be a strong signal” to the military and its civilian henchmen, an anti-coup business leader said.

But cutting financial transactions between the two nations would ruin many ordinary Haitians who depend on payments--which are called remittances here--from relatives in the United States. “At best,” the businessman said, “it will inconvenience the wealthy sector, but it will cut off the only supply of money many Haitians have.”

The ambiguous American policy follows 2 1/2 years of shifting U.S. approaches toward Haiti--from imposing and relaxing sanctions to asserting that both Aristide and army Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, the coup’s leader, were “extremes” who are blocking a resolution of the Haitian crisis.

Until just a few weeks ago, Aristide was under heavy American pressure to accept a compromise that would have removed Cedras but would have left in power another coup leader, Michel-Joseph Francois, the powerful police commander; under that approach, no date was set for Aristide to return.

That policy, however, was rejected vigorously by Aristide, leading Clinton to change his approach and seek U.N. support for tougher action in Haiti, including stiffer sanctions and the banning of travel for the military and its backers.

The U.N. Security Council voted for the more stringent economic sanctions and to require that all nations ban entry to “major participants in the 1991 coup and (those) . . . acting on behalf of the Haitian military.” The Administration also promised to ban all participants in the provisional Jonassaint government, which took office under army auspices last week.

American officials here say that almost 600 names have been put on the banned list, with fewer than 40 of them civilians and their families; most were members of civilian front governments in the months after the coup.

“It is puzzling,” one Haitian political expert said, “since the Brandts particularly have made no effort to hide their efforts or support (of the coup and the military). It is just another confusing and conflicting sign from the Americans. We still don’t know what they really want.”

The Mev family, which initially supported the coup and provided at least indirect financial support to the military, has, in the words of a Haitian business source, “been playing both sides.” He referred to the family’s involvement in drafting a plan, briefly backed by the United States, that would have left Aristide with an indefinite date of return and seriously reduced power.

Whatever their true attitude toward Aristide, the Brandts and Mevs, in particular, have used the time since the coup to expand their businesses to the point where they control most imports of products excluded from the embargo: food and propane gas used for cooking.

“Nobody can send in rice, sugar, wheat, corn or grocery products without going through those families, or without getting licenses from Haitian officials they control,” one businessman said.

A Haitian business leader, who opposed the coup and has worked for Aristide’s return, observed: “Isn’t it ironic? The Brandts and the others are allowed to travel to and from the United States and to continue their businesses while those . . . who fought the coup have to shut down (their) businesses.”