U.S. Seeks Refuge Sites for Haitians

The Clinton Administration, in an attempt to salvage its Haitian refugee policy, contacted countries as far away as West Africa on Friday in a search for havens and pledged that the United States will pay all costs of their operation.

The appeal came as the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada became the first country to officially agree to fill part of the void created when Panamanian President Guillermo Endara shocked the Administration on Thursday by canceling Panama’s agreement to take 10,000 Haitian refugees.

Grenadian Prime Minister Nicholas Brathwaite said his government will participate, although details have not been worked out. U.S. officials expect Antigua and Dominica also to participate. But the three islands are so small that they are unlikely to make up for the loss of the planned camps in Panama, which would have been the first and largest of the refugee sites.

In Naples, Italy, President Clinton sweetened the pot for potential havens by pledging that the United States will pay the full costs of operating Haitian refugee sites and will help host governments police the facilities.

A White House official said the Administration has asked several countries in West Africa to take in some of the Haitians, who are fleeing the impoverished island nation in ever-increasing numbers.

“We’re still in the discussion stage,” the official said. “We don’t want to divulge which countries we’re talking to because that will make the discussions more difficult.”

“After all,” he added, “West Africa is not much farther than Brazil or the United States.”

In another development, to prepare U.S. forces around Haiti for possible military action, officials said the Pentagon will order the amphibious command ship Mt. Whitney to the Caribbean next week to replace the amphibious assault ship Wasp, which has been stationed in the area for weeks.

Although the Mt. Whitney does not carry the 650-troop Marine complement that the Wasp does, the communications vessel does have facilities to serve as the nerve center for coordinating air and ground attacks by all four armed services. About 2,000 Marines are steaming toward Haiti aboard the amphibious assault ship Inchon.

Officials said the transfer of ships, which is expected to be announced Tuesday, is part of a plan to bolster U.S. naval capability in the area. The Inchon is expected to be relieved by the Wasp in late August or early September.

The Pentagon said Friday that 1,859 Haitians had been picked up at sea since Thursday, up 150 or so from the previous day. This increases the total since June 15 to nearly 16,000.

Stanley Schrager, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, said Coast Guard cutters and Navy ships are so overloaded with refugees that they are unable to pick up all of the Haitians trying to escape the island in small boats.

Reacting to the flood of refugees, the Administration announced this week that Haitians intercepted at sea would be transported to “safe havens” outside the United States where they could remain as long as the oppressive military government remains in power in Haiti.

It said that Haitians hoping to win asylum in the United States must apply at the embassy in Port-au-Prince or at two provincial centers where immigration inspectors will conduct extensive interviews to determine if they have a well-founded fear of persecution, the international standard for refugee status.

Officials said that standards for admission to the planned havens are far looser. Haitians need only say that they want to go to a camp rather than be returned to Haiti.

But officials said that those taken to the camps would not be allowed to apply for admission to the United States and would not be permitted to mingle with the population of the host country. In effect, the camps will be prison compounds, kept intentionally Spartan to prevent them from becoming attractive alternatives to the desperate conditions in Haiti.

In Naples, Clinton said he was disappointed that Endara reneged on his promise to establish camps in Panama. But the President expressed confidence that other sites can be found.

He said he personally had contacted leaders of several governments that might establish havens, assuring them “that they would bear no cost and that they would not have to worry about the security problems.”

U.S. officials said they could not estimate how much that will cost the American government, although it will certainly be tens of millions of dollars.

For his part, Endara continued to complain that American negotiators had trampled on Panamanian dignity. “They treated me as if this were a banana republic,” Endara said in an interview with Telemundo television news.

But President-elect Ernesto Perez Balladares, who will succeed Endara in September, said he is willing to talk with Clinton about reviving plans for Panama camps. He said Endara’s reversal “makes us an international laughingstock.”

Clinton said the only permanent solution to the Haitian crisis is the removal of the military government of Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras. Although the President said he hopes that economic sanctions will bring down the regime, he said an American invasion is possible, if peaceful methods do not succeed.

“I think the conduct of the (Haitian) military leaders will have more than anything else to do with what options are considered . . . and their conduct has not been good,” Clinton said.

But a senior American official accompanying Clinton sought to dampen speculation that U.S. military action is imminent. “You all are looking for some sort of date certain,” he told reporters. “That’s not where we are.”

In Washington, Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.) complained that Clinton is following “a policy of anarchy” that may make military action inevitable.

“With each new failure we move closer to direct military intervention,” Mfume said. “The worst kind of military intervention is the kind that was avoidable.”

Times staff writer Paul Richter in Naples and Art Pine in Washington contributed to this report.