U.S. Could Invade Haiti Alone, Envoy Says : Caribbean: President ready to act without U.N. approval if sanctions fail, Gray tells House panel.

Former Rep. William H. Gray III, the special White House envoy for Haiti, said Wednesday that President Clinton should not wait for approval from the United Nations or the Organization of American States if he decides to order a U.S. invasion to topple the military government.

Gray said Clinton still intends to see whether stepped-up political and economic sanctions can succeed in forcing Haiti’s military rulers to leave. But in unusually frank testimony about the possibility of an invasion, Gray told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Clinton is ready to consider unilateral U.S. military action if the sanctions fail.

And he said that he would advise Clinton to go ahead without waiting for explicit legal backing from any international organization.

“Even though we are participants in the U.N. (and) the OAS, and we work very closely with them . . . ultimately the decision to use a military option must be made by the President of the United States, not by an international body,” Gray said.

He added that Clinton would consult with Congress on the issue but would not commit himself to seeking a vote of approval before ordering military action.

Gray, a former Democratic congressman from Philadelphia, offered his saber-rattling statements as part of a two-track Clinton Administration strategy aimed at toppling the military regime that seized power in Haiti in 1991.

For the moment, he said, the Administration is concentrating on tightening economic and political sanctions against the Haitian rulers, including a coming ban on commercial air flights and a freeze on international financial transactions. “We hope that these sanctions will (succeed) . . . but it will have to be judged day to day, week to week as to whether or not it’s having that impact,” he said.

If sanctions do not work, he said, Clinton reserves the right to consider military action--and, in any case, America has “a responsibility” to help solve the Haitian crisis, he said. Among other reasons Clinton might use force, he added, would be if American citizens in the nation are in danger--although he acknowledged that there appears to be no such threat now.

Gray’s statement that Clinton could order an invasion without asking for approval from the United Nations or the OAS reflected the Administration’s continuing turn away from the idealistic multilateralism of its first months in office, when officials declared that the military interventions of the future would come in U.N. blue.

But Gray noted that some Latin American and Caribbean nations already privately support military action in Haiti. He did not name them but other officials said that Argentina, Jamaica and Grenada have all said they would support a U.S. invasion.

Gray also said the United States is making progress in assembling a multinational peacekeeping force for Haiti that would take over after the military regime falls--peacefully or because of an invasion. The new force’s mission, he said, would include protecting Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and “helping assure basic civil order.”

Other officials said the new force will not be ready before the middle of July--suggesting that no U.S. military intervention can be contemplated before then.

Members of the House committee were deeply skeptical that the sanctions could work--but also deeply divided over whether military action is advisable.

“American military intervention usually results only in . . . weakening the very institutions we want to strengthen,” said Rep. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.).

But another liberal Democrat, Rep. James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.), said, “The only policy that’s going to work to relieve the yoke of oppression is U.S. force.”