U.S. to Halt All Flights, Financial Ties With Haiti, Officials Say : Caribbean: Moves would tighten existing sanctions. Clinton reportedly has ordered other steps aimed at regime’s civilian backers.

The Clinton Administration is planning a ban on all air traffic, including passenger service, between Haiti and the United States, as well as a cutoff of financial transactions with the Caribbean nation, diplomatic and Haitian officials say.

The actions, described by a U.S. official as “the next logical step,” would augment already stringent international economic and financial sanctions that have stopped all but commercial passenger air traffic. President Clinton also reportedly has ordered other steps aimed at punishing civilian backers of Haiti’s military rulers.

The order affecting air and financial services will come this month, perhaps within two weeks, one U.S. official said. He said several days’ notice will be given before the flight cutoff to allow people--especially Americans--to leave or return to Haiti. Embassy sources estimate there are 1,000 Americans in Haiti.

U.S. officials said the latest bans target wealthy civilian supporters of Haiti’s military rulers, who took power in September, 1991, violently overthrowing Jean-Bertrand Aristide, this nation’s first democratically elected president.

They said the cuts in air traffic and financial transactions will be the last efforts by the White House to persuade the military to give up power or face American military intervention.

“If this doesn’t show them that we are serious, then I guess only Marines at the airport will do it,” said an American source in a telephone interview from Washington.

The tightening of the sanctions is part of an apparent three-step U.S. approach that involves reducing the privileges of the civilian elite; squeezing the general population with the aim of causing serious public discontent, and openly threatening military action.

As a measure of the heightened tension here over the possibility of U.S. military action, the United Nations and other international organizations later this week are expected to order dependents of their officials and employees to leave Haiti as soon as possible. One U.N. official said dependents were never officially permitted, although several have come to Haiti over the last few months anyway. They now are being told to leave.

The French Embassy also is preparing to send dependents out of the country and is closing its school early. U.S. diplomats here said a similar American move “is always under consideration. But not yet. There is nothing in the works.”

The American move to sever air and financial links would come in an executive order from Clinton. It would apply only to flights between the United States and Haiti. But it would effectively isolate this tiny island nation, because almost all international service in and out of Haiti connects through the United States; there are only infrequent flights through Panama, France and Canada.

The end of air service would be little more than an inconvenience, not a hardship, for most Haitians, particularly the wealthy families who travel often for shopping, entertainment and business. But many among this nation’s elite take great pride in their access to American culture and commerce and see their ability to fly on a moment’s notice to Miami as their escape route, if and when life in Haiti becomes unbearable.

“You are going to see a scramble for the airport like you can’t imagine,” a Haitian businessman said. “These people think they have a God-given right to go to Miami. Take that away from them and they’ll feel helpless.”

The Clinton Administration, embarrassed by reports of the devastating effects of economic sanctions on the poor but not the rich here, is moving to close, at least partially, the loopholes that had favored the elite and the military regime.

Officials said the U.S. Embassy has recommended to the State Department that some of the wealthy, who had been exempted, now be added to a list of Haitians prevented from traveling to the United States and that their assets there be frozen.

These individuals had been left off the list, even though they had backed the 1991 coup, because, as a U.S. official here said, “they had a role to play” in resolving the current crisis through their supposed influence with army leaders.

But the official, when asked this week to explain the policy shift, said of these families, “They seemed to have played out their role.”

State Department sources said news reports of the exemptions “forced the White House to act. It was hard to defend letting the Brandts and Madsens (two of the most powerful and outspoken families supporting the military) go back and forth to Miami while children were seen starving.”

Embassy officials would not disclose the list. But other sources said at least three members of the Madsen family had lost visas. And one American source said that “it is reasonable to expect that all” the elite families would lose their visas, including the Brandt, Madsen, Acra and Mev families.

Sources also said the United States was seeking to void contracts held by these families that enable them to control the import of the food, humanitarian aid and medicine exempted under the sanctions.

While the air ban would put some strains on individuals and families, the major impact would come from the cutoff of financial transactions. As with the general sanctions, the pain from Clinton’s newest decision would be felt most by the poor and the middle class. The move is likely to do little more than inconvenience the military and its civilian supporters. It could even enrich them, many sources said.

“This will prevent Haitians in the United States from sending money to their families,” said a Haitian businessman. These payments, or remittances, amount to tens of millions of dollars yearly and are the only source of money for many Haitians, especially the poor.

One businessman observed of the transactions ban: “It will cause a giant leap in the currency black market and make the gourde (Haiti’s currency) worthless. Anyone who has access to dollars will be rich. And who has the most access to dollars? The military.

“They’ll continue to run the smuggling, drugs and all the other things,” he added.