U.S. to Step Up Pressure on Haiti : Caribbean: Washington makes moves toward invasion in bid to show regime Clinton is not bluffing. Deadline weighed as part of ‘brinkmanship’ campaign.

The Clinton Administration plans military and diplomatic actions over the next few weeks--including new movements of U.S. troops into the Caribbean and a possible speech by President Clinton--to ensure that Haiti’s military rulers get the message that Clinton is serious about invading their nation if they do not step down, officials said Friday.

As part of a concerted campaign of combined psychological warfare and political signals, U.S. Navy ships and other forces are being readied to move closer to Haiti. U.S. warplanes will increase their window-rattling flights over the island. And 266 Caribbean troops are heading for some well-publicized training on a U.S. base in nearby Puerto Rico.

On the non-military side, Clinton aides are planning statements by the President to seek public and congressional support for an invasion. The Administration has asked leaders in other countries, like Dominican Republic President Joaquin Balaguer, to tell the Haitians that the United States is not bluffing this time.

Clinton is also seriously considering setting a formal deadline for the Haitians to step down and sending a last-ditch diplomatic mission to deliver the message--just as President George Bush did to Iraq before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

The Administration already has warned the Haitian regime that a major massacre of its domestic opponents or any attack on U.S. citizens in Haiti could touch off immediate U.S. military action.

Taken together, the Administration’s actions add up to a classic exercise in brinkmanship: moving its forces to the point of an invasion to increase the chance that Haiti’s rulers might blink.

“We still hope the Haitian military regime will get the message and allow us to resolve this thing without using force,” said one official involved in Haiti policy. “Until now, they never got the message. They always focused on the factors that weren’t in place yet and the conflicting signals coming out of Washington that suggested that we might not be serious.

“The signal they have been waiting for is now there: concrete steps that require the international community and the different agencies of the U.S. government to cooperate,” he said. “That is beginning to happen and they are going to see more of it.”

This week, the Administration stepped up its rhetoric on Haiti, with Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch publicly declaring: “The time for action has arrived. . . . There can be no doubt in anybody’s mind that the (U.S.-led) multinational force is going to Haiti.”

As important as Deutch’s message, officials said, was the position of the person delivering it--a top official from the Pentagon. Until this week, Defense Secretary William J. Perry had been a leading voice warning of the perils of an invasion of Haiti.

For the first time, the Haitians see the State and Defense departments “singing from the same hymnbook,” one official said.

At the same time, the Administration collected two important new pieces of international backing for military action.

Deutch and Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott won commitments from Caribbean countries, including Jamaica, Belize and Trinidad and Tobago, for troops in an invasion.

Their offer of 266 soldiers in rear-echelon units was little more than symbolic, but it provided the Administration with much-desired evidence that the United States would not be alone in supporting military action.

Second, U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali privately reported that he has received commitments from 10 countries to provide at least 2,000 troops for a U.N. peacekeeping force that would follow an invasion--the bare minimum needed. The foreign troops would combine with 2,000 U.S. troops, U.N. officials said.

The increasingly detailed preparations suggest, just as officials intended, that Clinton is moving steadily closer to a decision to invade Haiti if Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras and his fellow military rulers do not step down.

But they also suggest that it will take roughly a month before all the desired preliminary steps have been taken. The training of the 266 Caribbean troops, for example, has yet to start and will take at least four weeks to complete.

“We’re not expecting to see any real military operations for several more weeks,” said a Pentagon official familiar with the Administration’s strategy.

Still, Administration officials said that they believe the Haitian leaders may be vulnerable to the kind of steady escalation in pressure that they plan.

The success of the Administration strategy depends on Clinton’s ability to convey the message that he is serious about invading--the essence of what became known in the Cold War as “brinkmanship.”

John Foster Dulles, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s secretary of state, was credited with inventing the term when he said, speaking of U.S. confrontations with the Soviet Union, “The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art.”

In this instance of brinkmanship, officials noted, the Administration suffers from one major handicap but also enjoys one major advantage.

The handicap is that Clinton has won a reputation, fairly or not, for indecision, including over what to do in Haiti.

The Haitians “have always doubted our commitment, and they have had some reason,” one official said. As a result, he said, the Haitians may not recognize that Clinton and his aides really are serious--and thus force the United States to go over the brink and invade.

The advantage, on the other hand, is that an invasion of Haiti, with its ramshackle army of about 7,000 troops and no functioning air force or navy, poses no danger of seriously daunting U.S. casualties.

“We’ve tried everything else,” one official said glumly. “This is the only option we have left.”

And, he said, “it’s beginning to look almost inevitable.”