U.S. Rules Out Immediate Military Action in Haiti : Caribbean: Administration will rely instead on stepped-up sanctions to drive out the regime.

The Clinton Administration has decided against immediate military action in Haiti, hoping instead that stepped-up economic and political sanctions can drive the military regime from power there, senior officials said Tuesday.

After weeks of debate between White House aides seeking a quick solution to the Haiti impasse and a Pentagon wary of using force, the Administration has settled on a series of diplomatic actions in hopes that the sanctions can be made effective, they said.

President Clinton may reopen the internal debate over military intervention if the sanctions fail, but he has set no deadline for that decision, the officials said.

Meanwhile, they said, the Administration is trying to make the sanctions work--and seeking commitments for a multinational peacekeeping force of 2,000 to 4,000 troops to pacify Haiti if the regime falls. “We really do want to find a peaceful multilateral solution in Haiti,” Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott said after returning from a trip to Latin America that focused on efforts to tighten the sanctions.

Talbott, the Administration’s diplomatic point man on the issue, argued that new U.N.-sponsored sanctions can succeed in driving the Haitian military regime from power, despite the doubts of the policy’s critics.

He said the Administration has made progress in winning support from Latin American countries for the new sanctions. And, he said, several countries have agreed to contribute to a new, more muscular U.N. peacekeeping force that would police the island once the military regime is toppled.

“That . . . sends a tough signal to them that the international community is serious about this,” he said. “It also sends a signal to the many Haitians that are staying in their country that there is hope for the future.”

Talbott and other officials refused to say which countries have agreed to participate. But Canada, France, Venezuela and Argentina have all been involved in discussions about the peacekeeping force.

The new force is being designed as an “expanded” version of the U.N.-sponsored military training force, which was scheduled to land in Haiti in October but turned back when armed Haitian thugs gathered at the dock.

Some countries said, however, that they would participate only after a peaceful transfer of power in Haiti and warned that they might not join if the United States invades the island, one official said.

The Organization of American States, meeting in Brazil, passed a resolution Tuesday endorsing the expanded force and urging all its members to join the stepped-up economic embargo. The OAS resolution was something of a diplomatic victory for the Administration. Some Latin American countries initially sought a resolution formally ruling out any use of military force in Haiti, but Talbott and other U.S. officials lobbied to avoid such a prohibition.

U.S. officials explained that even though Clinton has not decided on military action, he does not want to face an OAS prohibition--and, more immediately, he does not want to relax pressure on the Haitian military by taking the option off the table.

Some foreign policy aides, frustrated by the failure of previous sanctions to budge the military regime, had urged that military intervention be actively considered. Although Defense Secretary William J. Perry dismissed the idea, Pentagon officials later acknowledged that they had been forced to consider the step because of the depth of Clinton’s commitment to solving the Haiti issue.

The main new sanctions against Haiti include a complete trade embargo, including efforts to stop smuggling across the nation’s border with the Dominican Republic; a ban on commercial air flights; a halt to financial transactions; a freeze on overseas financial assets of Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, Haiti’s military ruler, and others in the regime, and cancellation of the entry visas of the rulers and their relatives.

In additional moves to enforce the sanctions, the Pentagon said it may send a small number of U.S. troops to the Dominican Republic to maintain helicopters and other equipment for the trade embargo.

Officials said they have decided to move ahead with plans for a U.S.-funded ship-borne radio station to allow exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to broadcast to his people.

“What is important now is that we are seeing more cooperation from other countries in implementing the sanctions as well,” one official said.

But the United States has also been slow. Aristide’s chief U.S. adviser, former Rep. Michael D. Barnes, said the State Department canceled Cedras’ wife’s U.S. visa--which she had used for shopping trips to Miami--only last week.