Haiti Orders Out Rights Monitors : Caribbean: U.N. and OAS are expected to comply and withdraw observers. U.S. and allies call military regime’s action ‘a serious escalation in the conflict.’

The military authorities of Haiti, defying the international community once again, Monday ordered the expulsion within 48 hours of all human rights observers of the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

“The reasons are quite obvious,” Dante Caputo, the chief U.N. official for Haiti, said at U.N. headquarters in New York. “They kill people. They torture people. They rape people. And they don’t want any witnesses in their country.”

He denounced the decree as “outrageous,” “a provocation” and “an insult to the international community.”

Later, U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright, reading a statement on behalf of the United States, France, Canada, Venezuela and Argentina, denounced the act as “a serious escalation of the conflict” and warned that it underscored “the need for quick and decisive action by the international community to end the Haitian crisis.”

But, when asked if this meant an invasion, she replied, “There is no point in trying to figure out whether we will call their bluff.”

The five countries, known at the United Nations as “the Friends of Haiti,” have been asked to take a special interest in the problem.

The joint international mission in Haiti is made up of 64 OAS and 40 U.N. observers. Although subjected to threats and harassment, the observers have managed in the last few months to send out a stream of bulletins about the deterioration of human rights under the military authorities blocking the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Caputo, a former Argentine foreign minister, declined to answer when asked if he believed the provocation was enough to justify American intervention to remove the military leaders of the impoverished Caribbean country.

State Department spokeswoman Christine Shelly also declined to speculate on whether the expulsion has brought the Clinton Administration closer to mounting a Haiti intervention.

But, she said, “we certainly condemn the illegal de facto regime in Port-au-Prince for . . . its stated intention to expel the . . . human rights observers from Haiti. . . . Their cynical action, I think, is a clear indication that the human rights situation in Haiti is deteriorating even further.”

U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali met with acting OAS Secretary General Christopher R. Thomas to work out a response to the Haitian decree. It was widely assumed that they would decide to comply with the expulsion and remove the observers for their own safety as soon as possible.

In October, after a gang of shouting roughnecks on the Port-au-Prince docks prompted President Clinton to order the tank landing ship Harlan County to abandon its attempt to land a contingent of American and Canadian peacekeepers, the United Nations and OAS removed the observers from Haiti as a precaution. But the observers returned early this year and have been monitoring human rights violations since then.

Caputo said Haitian military authorities handed the decree to U.N. officials in Port-au-Prince on Monday morning. The decree, he said, was “signed by the dictator in Haiti, Mr. Jonassaint.” The military installed Supreme Court Judge Emile Jonassaint as provisional president May 11 in an act condemned by the Security Council and Boutros-Ghali.

Caputo said the Jonassaint decree had three provisions: It declared the observers undesirable; it ordered their expulsion within 48 hours, and it called on the Haitian army to enforce the order.

In Port-au-Prince, mission officials told reporters that the military government had informed them it regarded the mission as illegal and a threat to national security. The officials said they also were told that the Haitians wanted to avoid “an incident or a provocation.” On Friday, the General Assembly had authorized an extension of U.N. participation in the mission for another year.

While doing so, the Assembly condemned the Jonassaint presidency, demanded the departure of the military leaders and called for the return of Aristide. The mission in Haiti is the only one that the United Nations ever has mounted in partnership with the OAS, whose membership includes most governments in the Western Hemisphere.

According to reports from Reuters news agency in Port-au-Prince, a senior government official said the observers would lose their diplomatic status in 48 hours, which would subject them to expulsion as ordinary citizens.

Acknowledging that it might be difficult for them to leave because of the sanctions that have ended most flights, the official said, “We can always put them at the airport and give them sleeping bags.”

Meanwhile, the Pentagon reported that the amphibious assault ship Inchon, with 2,000 Marines aboard, had reached its destination off the coast of Haiti.

U.S. officials insisted that they have ordered the Marines to these waters to prepare to rescue Americans should their lives be threatened. But the buildup has also fed rumors of a possible U.S. invasion.

Shelly, of the State Department, said the Coast Guard picked up 1,740 Haitians over the weekend, down significantly from previous days. Since June 15, when the Administration resumed interviews of Haitians fleeing by sea, 19,200 have been picked up.

Shelly said there still is a possibility that Panama might provide a haven. “But in terms of the immediate time frame, I think . . . the situation is reflected by . . . the decision of President (Guillermo) Endara,” she said.

Endara, after first pledging to take in 10,000 Haitians, changed his mind last week.

President-elect Ernesto Perez Balladares, who will succeed Endara Sept. 1, has implied that he would accept some refugees.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this report.