Clinton Tells Americans ‘We Must Act’ Now to Help Haiti : Speech: President warns regime: ‘Your time is up. Leave now or we will force you from power.’ He insists U.S. has exhausted all other options for restoring Caribbean nation’s deposed leader.

With massive military preparations pointing to an imminent U.S. invasion of Haiti, President Clinton delivered a blunt message to the Caribbean nation’s military dictators: “Your time is up. Leave now or we will force you from power.”

The President, grim-faced during a 15-minute nationally televised speech from the White House on Thursday night, combined an unequivocal warning to the Haitian regime that military action is at hand with an unusually direct appeal for support from an American public still skeptical and unconvinced that vital U.S. interests are at stake.

“In Haiti,” he declared, “we have a case in which the right is clear, in which the country in question is nearby, in which our own interests are plain, in which the mission is achievable and limited, and in which the nations of the world stand with us. We must act.

“I know the American people are rightfully concerned whenever our soldiers are put at risk,” Clinton said. “I assure you that no President makes decisions like this one without deep thought and prayer. But it’s my job as President and commander in chief to take those actions that I believe will best protect our national security interests.”

The speech was Clinton’s first full-scale effort to make his case for an invasion if the regime led by Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras continues to reject demands by the United States and the United Nations that it yield power.

“Once again, I urge them to do so,” Clinton said, but “they must move now. If they do not, the international community will act to honor our commitments.”

Clinton’s warning was greeted with more defiance in Port-au-Prince. Cedras, interviewed by CBS-TV immediately after Clinton’s speech, said: “I am rather prepared to fight with my people. . . . We are all ready to fight with the means we have.

“The Haitian people have an extraordinary resistance capacity,” he added. “Those three years spent under economic sanctions have proven what I say. The people are ready to resist.”

Earlier in the day, Cedras had said that a U.S. invasion would lead to civil war and a “massacre.” He predicted “loss of life on both sides and also civilian casualties.”

White House officials said Clinton has decided to instruct the U.S. ambassador in Haiti, William L. Swing, to deliver private ultimatums to each of the top three military leaders--Cedras; his chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Philippe Biamby; and Lt. Col. Michel-Joseph Francois, the police chief--to leave the country or face capture by U.S. troops. Swing may deliver the messages within the next two days.

Swing will give the Haitians a fixed deadline to step down, the officials said, but the deadline will not be made public, to avoid touching off possible attacks by the military’s backers against supporters of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide or U.S. citizens in Haiti. Aristide, the first and only democratically elected president in Haitian history, was deposed by the military junta on Sept. 30, 1991. U.S. policy is to restore him to power.

The officials said Swing also will repeat Clinton’s offer to guarantee the Haitian junta leaders safe passage out of the country and help in establishing them in exile.

Other officials said the CIA has been authorized to spend substantial amounts of money, if necessary, to get the Haitians out of the country--without resorting to outright bribery, however. The officials said Clinton authorized the CIA to spend up to $12 million on a range of covert operations in Haiti, including moving the dictators into exile.

In seeking to rally public support behind his policy, the President offered four basic arguments to support his contention that vital U.S. interests are at stake in Haiti:

* Supporting democratic governments, especially in countries close to home, strengthens America’s own security and fuels domestic prosperity, because history has shown free governments to be more stable and peaceable than dictatorships. They are also more likely to foster open economies that satisfy the aspirations of their people and open up trading opportunities for the United States.

* Continued chaos and repression in Haiti will lead to ever-larger waves of refugees risking their lives to escape to the United States, creating vexatious problems and burdensome costs for this country. About 14,000 Haitian refugees are already living in camps at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the Haiti problem has cost taxpayers almost $200 million so far, he noted.

* The United States has a special responsibility to move against brutal violations of human rights when they occur close to America’s shores. “I know that the United States cannot, indeed we should not, be the world’s policeman. . . . But when brutality occurs close to our shores it affects our national interest and we have a responsibility to act,” he said, reciting in grim detail an increasingly murderous record that he blamed on the Haitian regime.

* The United States, dating back to the Administration of former President George Bush, has been committed to restoring Aristide to power; maintaining American credibility around the world requires it to follow through on its own commitments and to insist on compliance with commitments made to the United States by others.

Clinton said that the United States “has strong interest in not letting dictators, especially in our own region, break their word to the United States and the United Nations.”

In his appeal for public support at home, the President said U.S. military leaders have worked hard to minimize risks to American troops. “But the risks are there--we must be prepared for that.”

Addressing concerns voiced by many Americans that U.S. troops might be bogged down in Haiti for a protracted period, Clinton declared that most of the invasion force would be returned home within a matter of months--”not years.”

Administration officials said they still think that there is a possibility that Cedras, Biamby and Francois will decide to leave the country at the last minute. Even if they do, U.S. forces would still enter Haiti to restore order and train a civilian-controlled security force to replace the thugs who now control the country, the officials said.

The U.S. mission will be specific and limited, declared Clinton, who has been criticized by both Democrats and Republicans for refusing to seek congressional approval of the invasion. He compared the mission to the invasion of Grenada during the Ronald Reagan Administration and the invasion of Panama during the Bush Administration. Neither Reagan nor Bush sought congressional approval before acting.

And in describing the aftermath of the Haitian military coup, when the dictators launched “a horrible intimidation campaign of rape, torture and mutilation,” he quoted then-President Bush as declaring that the situation posed “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States.”

Clinton said the Haitian mission would be carried out in two phases.

First would come the removal of the military dictators from power and restoration of Aristide, who was chosen as president with almost 70% of the vote. Aristide served nine months before being overthrown.

After a Haitian security force that would “protect the people rather than repress them” had been trained, Clinton said, police monitors from other countries supporting the U.S. mission “will work with the authorities to maximize basic security and civil order and to minimize retribution.”

In the second phase, he said, a much smaller U.S. force--estimated at less than 3,000 by Administration officials--will join forces with other U.N. contingents to help Haiti rebuild its society and move toward new elections next year. This contingent would be scheduled to leave Haiti after a new Haitian government takes office in early 1996.

Clinton said Aristide, a controversial figure who some critics have described as radical and even unstable, has pledged to step down when his term as president ends next year.

The President spoke slowly and forcefully as he painted a graphic picture of a reign of terror conducted by “Cedras and his armed thugs, executing children, raping women, killing priests. As the dictators have grown more desperate, the atrocities have grown even more brutal.”

International observers, he said, uncovered “a terrifying pattern of soldiers and policemen raping the wives and daughters of suspected political dissidents--young girls--13, 16 years old--people slain and mutilated, with body parts left as warnings to terrify others, children forced to watch as their mothers’ faces are slashed with machetes.”

Clinton’s effort to explain his position to the public came none too soon, as opinion polls and scattered anti-invasion demonstrations made clear.

Shortly before Clinton’s speech, Defense Secretary William J. Perry announced that about 1,600 military reservists will be called up for possible service in Haiti.

If the Haitian dictators stand fast and Clinton orders the invasion, a quick military victory seems assured because Haiti’s ragtag army of about 7,000 men would be hopelessly overmatched against the allied force of at least 20,000 well-armed troops. But if there are substantial American casualties or embarrassing accidents caused by the fog of war, the operation could seem to be a defeat for the Administration even if all of the military objectives are ultimately met.

And it did not take long for the operation to produce an embarrassing mishap. A Navy fast patrol boat, the Monsoon, went aground on what the Navy said was an uncharted sandbar about two miles off the coast of Haiti. A Coast Guard vessel helped to free the Monsoon late Thursday.

Wanted: Haiti’s Outlaw Leaders

President Clinton has demanded that these three Haitian leaders step down. If they do not, he has vowed to send in American troops to oust them.

RAOUL CEDRAS

Position: Army commander

A reputed protege of the late dictator Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier, Cedras is the son of a Duvalier official in the southeastern town of Jeremie. He graduated in 1973 from the Haitian military academy and was sent by Duvalier for training in the United States, Spain, Mexico and Taiwan. Duvalier’s son and successor, Jean-Claude (Baby Doc), appointed him to the elite anti-guerrilla Leopards Corps. After the younger Duvalier fled into exile in 1986, Cedras was put in charge of security for the 1989 elections in which Jean-Bertrand Aristide was chosen president. Subsequently, Aristide appointed him interim commander-in-chief of the army. In September, 1991, Cedras headed the bloody coup that drove Aristide from the island.

MICHEL-JOSEPH FRANCOIS

POSITION: Port-au-Prince police chief

The notoriously secretive Francois is widely considered the mastermind of Haiti’s ongoing wave of murderous repression. He himself denies that he even heads the capital’s police force, claiming instead to be military commander of the capital district--even though he wears a police uniform, carries a policeman’s helmet and has his office in police headquarters. Son of an army major who served in palace security and was promoted by Francois Duvalier, he graduated in 1981 from the Haitian military academy, where he was a student of current army chief Cedras, and then attended the U.S. command school for foreign officers at Ft. Bragg, N.C. He reportedly had a major role in the 1991 coup. His older brother, Evans, was once a professional diplomat.

PHILIPPE BIAMBY

POSITION: Army chief of staff

Like Cedras and Francois, Biamby is the son of a prominent member of the Francois Duvalier regime. His father was once defense and interior minister and also worked as the dictator’s private secretary. Thought to be the most hard-line member of the triumvirate, Biamby graduated from Haiti’s military academy in the same class as Cedras. In 1989, he led an unsuccessful coup against Lt. Gen. Prosper Avril, who was then president. Forced out of the military, he fled to the Dominican Republic and then to the United States, where he was arrested on immigration charges and spent six months in a New York immigration prison. After Aristide was overthrown, Cedras reinstated him almost immediately. He reportedly lives very austerely, sleeping either at the general headquarters or in the room at his mother’s house he has had since he was a child.