U.S. Force to Stay in Haiti at Least Through December : Military: Withdrawal is not likely before elections. Costs could reach $250 million by year’s end.

The Clinton Administration said Thursday that the 14,000-member U.S. force it is assembling in Haiti will remain on the island at least through December and could cost up to $250 million to maintain through that period alone.

Defense Secretary William J. Perry said the Administration was unlikely to begin withdrawing even a part of the force before the Haitian elections in December.

Even then, he said, it could take longer before the bulk of the contingent withdraws.

Perry’s new estimates were the first formal indications that the Administration has given of how long and how costly the Haitian expedition may be. The secretary spoke while on an inspection tour at the Norfolk, Va., naval base.

Perry said the Administration probably will submit a supplemental budget request of $50 million to cover the first phase of the operation, through fiscal 1994, which ends Sept. 30. The remaining $200 million will be sought as part of the fiscal 1995 budget.

The hefty cost of the operation was considered likely to trouble congressional conservatives, who have been complaining that the Administration’s military ventures in Third World trouble spots have been sapping money from military-preparedness programs.

Besides spending on the Haiti mission, the Administration already has laid out $1.4 billion for the American venture in Somalia, $267 million for U.S. forces in Macedonia, $124 million for the deployment to Rwanda and $106 million for Bosnia-Herzegovina.

It has also spent tens of millions of dollars on the recent effort to rescue and house Haitian and Cuban refugees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The 14,000-strong U.S. force in Haiti is scheduled to remain on the island until it has secured the country for the return of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and helped retrain the Haitian army and police force. The U.S. contingent will then give way to a 6,000-member peacekeeping force that is to include 2,000 Americans.

Perry said the American force in Haiti was to have grown to about 11,000 troops by late Thursday night, with 3,000 more expected today or early Saturday. He said Haiti was now in a “transition phase” before the multinational operation begins.

A senior Pentagon official told reporters Thursday that advance troops from Caribbean countries--the first part of the multinational force--will begin arriving this weekend.

But Perry cautioned that American troops may be forced to remain in Haiti well past the end of the year, if the effort to overhaul the Haitian military and police forces does not go as well as hoped. “We never envisioned it as a piece of cake,” he said.

Pentagon officials said that from all indications, it appeared that the Haitian military was continuing to cooperate Thursday, after some tensions over the excessive use of force by the island’s police squads on Tuesday.

The Justice Department said Thursday that it had dispatched its first contingent to Haiti to locate sites where Haitian police found not to have taken part in human rights abuses can be trained under a department program.

The training, to be provided under the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program, a Justice Department effort funded by the Agency for International Development, will cover two areas--one in criminal investigation techniques, including forensics, fingerprinting and handling of criminal evidence, and the other in police ethics and civil rights.

Times staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow contributed to this report.