Carter Mission Presses Haiti’s Leaders to Leave : Caribbean: White House calls first meeting ‘serious and constructive.’ Two night sessions are also held; more are expected today. U.S. forces are in place off the coast.

In what President Clinton called “one last, best effort” to avoid bloodshed, a delegation led by former President Jimmy Carter met with Haiti’s top military leaders into the early hours this morning, hoping to persuade them to step aside rather than face an invasion by the huge U.S. force poised offshore.

Neither side indicated whether any progress was made in the first round of talks, which lasted about three hours Saturday afternoon. Outside, a crowd of demonstrators opposed to Clinton’s goal of restoring ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide chanted, “Democracy, yes, Aristide, no.”

Immediately after the meeting with the U.S. delegation, which included Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and retired Gen. Colin L. Powell, a defiant Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, the nation’s military leader, stepped onto a balcony, smiling and waving to the hundreds of supporters below.

The White House provided little detail about the afternoon talks other than to say they were “serious and constructive.”

The U.S. delegation’s talks with Cedras resumed after a dinner with important members of Haiti’s wealthy elite and other supporters of the military regime. On his way to the night meeting, which lasted into the early morning hours, Carter said he was “hopeful, that’s all.”

After the meeting, Carter said, “I have nothing to say tonight. . . . We are continuing to work.” Further meetings were expected today.

As a motorcade whisked the three Americans to the night meeting, the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, were virtually empty under a partial curfew. The city was darkened by a lack of electricity, and some sporadic shooting was reported in the downtown area. Soldiers manning roadblocks in and out of Port-au-Prince had taken off their uniforms and were in civilian clothes as part of the military’s apparent plans to “evaporate” in the event of an invasion, but the troops showed no signs of nervousness.

The U.S. delegation arrived in Port-au-Prince as preparations neared a climax for an invasion that appeared imminent. U.S. military commanders met Clinton in the Pentagon “war room” to outline their detailed plans for military action.

The Defense Department announced that all elements of an invasion force are now in place off the coast of Haiti. Defense Secretary William J. Perry flew to the Caribbean to visit the troops that are prepared to seize Haiti from the military government that has ruled the island nation since the overthrow of Aristide in September, 1991.

The Army called nine reserve units and a National Guard company to active service, the first reservists to be activated out of about 1,600 that were put on alert Thursday. Because a reserve call-up so disrupts the lives of the individual reservists, their families and their employers, it was considered to be a sign of the seriousness of Clinton’s determination to invade in the absence of any deal.

Late Saturday evening, Clinton told the Congressional Black Caucus, the one congressional group that has supported his plans to invade Haiti, that “the time for idle discussion has ended. There is still a little time for serious discussion.”

“The mission is still in Haiti; let us hope for its success,” Clinton said. “But whatever happens, let us resolve that we will stand against violations of human rights and terrorism in our neighborhood, we will stand for democracy, and we will keep our commitments and expect those who make commitments to us to keep theirs.”

Earlier, White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers said Clinton would not give Cedras a chance to put off the invasion by dragging out his talks with Carter.

“I will not be delayed. I will not be deterred,” Myers quoted Clinton as saying.

Administration officials said Carter’s only mandate on his mission is to persuade Haiti’s three top military leaders--Cedras, Brig. Gen. Philippe Biamby and Lt. Col. Michel-Joseph Francois--to surrender power and leave the impoverished nation.

The former President expects to leave Haiti today. Upon his arrival there Saturday, he was known to be optimistic that Cedras, Biamby and Francois would accompany him aboard his U.S. Air Force jetliner on their way into exile.

U.S. officials say the three military leaders have sent conflicting signals, sometimes indicating they are ready to give up in the face of the overwhelming power of the invasion force but at other times vowing to fight to the death.

One source said the White House had received at least one credible report suggesting that Cedras had indicated Friday that he might be willing to leave Haiti without a fight, but by Saturday morning he had changed his mind.

But Rep. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee who met with Cedras in Haiti in late July, said Saturday that he had received a written message from the military leader “that suggests he’s disposed to negotiate.”

Richardson said Cedras wanted assurances that the military leaders and their families could leave the country in safety for exile, that there would be no retaliation against soldiers loyal to the military regime and that the military leaders could return to Haiti some day. He said Cedras also wanted to be sure that he would have access to frozen bank accounts.

U.S. officials said most of the conditions were acceptable, although the United States was unwilling to assure Cedras that he would be permitted to return to Haiti. The U.S. position is that the general should leave the island. It would be up to the restored Aristide government to decide if he would ever be allowed back.

“Cedras has political ambitions,” Richardson said. “He wants to return and run for president some day. Certainly not in the immediate future. He thinks of himself as popular in the countryside.

“I think we should be flexible there so long as their departure does not harm Aristide in his tenure in office,” the lawmaker added.

The U.S. delegation arrived in Port-au-Prince aboard an Air Force Boeing 707, the type Carter used as Air Force One when he was in the White House.

Upon his arrival, Carter told reporters that he was in Haiti on “a very simple but very important mission . . . to devise a peaceful implementation” of the U.N. Security Council resolution calling for Aristide’s restoration to power.

In June, Carter mystified and angered Administration officials by publicly claiming to have brokered an agreement between the United States and North Korea before sending a full report to the President. Although the White House later embraced the Carter-mediated Korean compromise, Clinton and Carter were clearly determined to avoid that sort of confusion this time.

Clinton emphasized that the only issue Carter and his delegation could discuss was whether Cedras, Biamby and Francois would step down peacefully or be driven from power.

In his regular Saturday morning radio broadcast, Clinton said Carter, Nunn, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were sent “to make one last best effort to provide a peaceful, orderly transfer of power, to minimize the loss of life and to maximize the chances of security for all Haitians and, of course, for our own troops and the coalition force.”

As for the Haitian leaders, Clinton said: “Their time is up. The remaining question is not whether they will leave, but how they will leave. They can go peacefully and increase the chances for a peaceful future and a more stable future for Haiti in the near term, not only for all those whose democracy they stole, but for themselves as well. They can do that, or they will be removed by force.”

Clinton was accompanied by Vice President Al Gore on his visit to the Pentagon “war room,” officially known as the National Military Command Center, where Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the chiefs of the individual services briefed them on military preparations.

“They’ve done an excellent job,” Gore said as he left the meeting.

The Pentagon announced that the aircraft carriers America and Dwight D. Eisenhower, the final elements of a powerful 18-warship armada, arrived off the coast of Haiti on Saturday. About 6,000 troops, the vanguard of an invasion force expected to total 20,000, were aboard the ships.

“Everything is in place,” Pentagon spokesman Dennis Boxx said. “The gun is cocked.”

In Port-au-Prince, hundreds of Haitians fled the capital in advance of the expected invasion. News agency reports said the families of military leaders, including the wife and children of Francois, the capital police chief, had crossed the border into the Dominican Republic.

At the same time, thousands of residents of Port-au-Prince’s fetid slums--Aristide’s staunchest supporters--boarded trucks and broken-down buses in an effort to reach the relative safety of the countryside. Backers of the ousted president expressed fear that they would be the targets of attack by the 7,000-member Haitian army, which is no match for the invaders but could still exact revenge against unarmed civilians.

Although Clinton has lined up 24 nations to contribute token contingents of troops to the predominantly U.S. invasion force, the President’s decision to use force to remove the Haitian dictators if they do not step down peacefully remained unpopular on Capitol Hill and with the American public.

A Time Magazine/CNN poll released Saturday showed that 58% of the public opposed the use of force in Haiti, despite Clinton’s appeal for support in a nationally televised address Thursday evening. Only 27% said the troops should be sent in, even less than the 30% who supported an invasion two weeks ago.

In the Republican response to Clinton’s radio speech, Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.) denounced Aristide as a leftist and said the United States should do nothing to help him regain power.

Freed reported from Port-au-Prince and Kempster from Washington. Times staff writers Jack Nelson, David Lauter, Alan C. Miller and Robin Wright also contributed to this story from Washington.