Haiti Regime Says It Has Allies in U.S. Congress : Caribbean: Leaders boast of ‘back channel’ to Dole, who opposes invasion. Senator calls claim ‘delusional.’

As the Clinton Administration struggles to persuade Haiti’s military rulers to step down, the isolated, brutal regime has found comfort and encouragement from an unlikely source: members of the U.S. Congress.

Last week, the Haitians declared they had a friend in Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who sponsored a resolution to delay any U.S. military action against Haiti.

“We’ve always had a not-so-open connection with Bob Dole . . . , a back channel,” boasted Bernard Sansari, self-proclaimed president of Haiti’s Senate. “We see Dole as someone who understands us.”

Dole angrily denied any contacts with the Haitian regime and dismissed the claim as “delusional.”

“If the thugs running Haiti’s illegal government are banking on support from me or the Republican Party, they will not get it,” he told the Senate. Nevertheless, the regime’s officials say they still consider him one of their best friends in Washington.

This week, Haitian leader Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, who overthrew democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991, latched onto a new “back channel”--Rep. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, who met with the general for five hours and returned to Washington extolling his virtues.

“Cedras is not as intransigent as everybody pictures him to be,” Richardson said, urging the Administration to seek negotiations. “He feels misunderstood. I think he’s a realistic person.”

The Administration stiffly rejected the idea. “I would hope there is flexibility, but the flexibility should translate itself into very simple action: They should leave,” said Anthony Lake, President Clinton’s national security adviser.

Administration officials were unhappy with Dole and Richardson for a variety of reasons.

For one, they complained, the Haitian regime--and many ordinary Haitians--interpreted the legislators’ actions as a form of support for Cedras, even if Dole and Richardson didn’t mean it that way.

“Haitians are convinced that the military has friends in Washington who truly set the policy and that they are opposed to Aristide--otherwise, why isn’t he back here?” one diplomat explained.

Moreover, the Administration desperately wants to avoid reopening the issue of whether the United States should seek a negotiated settlement with Cedras.

Besides Dole and Richardson, former President George Bush and other leading Republicans have suggested that the Administration should seek negotiations; so have some officials in the CIA. But Clinton and his aides have rejected any further compromise with the generals.

Both Dole and Richardson said they have tried to avoid any mixed signals that might encourage the Haitian regime to dig in its heels.

Yet the Haitians, perhaps indulging in some deliberate wishful thinking, said they believed they could rely on significant support in Washington from such figures as former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and Sens. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.).

“We like to see Republicans speaking on our behalf,” Sansari said. “Statements by Kissinger, Helms, Dole and McCain make us feel at least we are not fighting in vain. They at least understand us.”

An Aristide supporter agreed that the military had gained from congressional leaders’ statements. “Cedras is telling everyone he has protection” in Washington, said Sen. Fermin Jean-Louis, who claims that he, not Sansari, is the legitimate president of the Haitian Senate. “A lot of soldiers believe the United States is bluffing” about an invasion because they believe Cedras, Jean-Louis said.

Dole and Richardson both appear, at least in part, to be victims of the law of unintended consequences.

Richardson, declaring he went to Haiti only because Cedras invited him, said he tried to convince the general that the Administration was serious about launching an invasion if the regime clung to power. But the Haitians appear to have hoped that the congressman, an expert on intelligence, would instead open up a new back channel for talks between Cedras and Clinton.

As for Dole, the Haitians claim that the senator actively sought Cedras’ approval for his Senate resolution, which would have set up a 45-day study commission on Haiti. According to Haitian Sen. Thomas Eddy Dupiton, a strong Cedras supporter, Dole suggested that it would help if Cedras would endorse his proposal.

“The idea came from Washington because they know exactly what we want,” said Sansari, who speaks openly and proudly of his perceived alliances with Dole and others in Washington.

If anything, Cedras’ endorsement backfired. Democratic senators cited it as a reason to vote against Dole’s idea; the Senate rejected the commission plan July 14 in a 57-42 vote.

Dole repeated this week that he neither sought nor wanted Cedras’ blessing. “This idea was not made in Haiti,” he said. “Neither I nor any member of my staff has met or communicated with any representative of the Haitian government.”

But a senior Dole aide acknowledged that he met in Washington last month with Pierre Duly Brutus, a member of the Haitian Parliament who has been critical of both Cedras and Aristide.

“I wanted to ask him some basic questions,” the aide said. “Our proposal was being rejected and this was the only way we had of checking whether our government was getting the information it needed” to formulate its Haitian policy.

They did not discuss Dole’s proposal for a bipartisan commission and Brutus “got absolutely nothing from me,” the aide said. But Brutus did pick up a copy of the Dole plan at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank--and that may be how Dole’s proposal reached Haiti.

Freed reported from Port-au-Prince and Ross reported from Washington. Times staff writer Doyle McManus in Washington contributed to this report.