U.S. Both Supportive, Wary of New Aristide : Transition: Officials hope Haitian president will practice what he’s now preaching: reconciliation.

As a student in Haiti’s Roman Catholic schools for most of the 1960s and 1970s, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was regarded as gifted and promising, finishing near the top of his class in qualifying both for a master’s degree and for ordination as a priest.

But when Aristide became a parish priest, his sermons about the condition of the island’s poor proved too provocative for the taste of the church hierarchy. After thugs working for Haiti’s dictator of the day burned down his church and tried to kill him in 1988, the Salesian order expelled him for “fomenting class struggle.”

Now Aristide, as Haiti’s exiled president, is once again proving to be an exceptionally apt student. Tutored by such leading Clinton Administration officials as National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and a handful of other top officials, Aristide has embraced the principles of democracy, national reconciliation and market economics with a zeal that Washington would like to see in all leaders of developing nations.

But will Aristide, who is to be restored to his office within a week, courtesy of 20,000 U.S. troops in Haiti, continue to sing these tunes once he is back in power? Or will he revert to the firebrand priest who preaches Marxist economics and feeds Haiti’s class struggle? Administration officials, while concerned, say they have reason to believe in a new Aristide.

“He has been cooperative with us in every way,” a senior Administration official said.

Another official added: “He is, we are convinced, serious about wanting a broad-based government . . . serious about wanting a political environment that is peaceful.”

The United States wins if Aristide keeps his promises to consolidate democracy by stepping aside for an elected successor in early 1996 and if, in the meantime, he repairs the country’s tattered economy while discouraging his impoverished followers from taking revenge on those who have oppressed them. But if the Haitian president changes his message once he is back in power, President Clinton would be a big loser.

At the suggestion of the Administration, Aristide has established a transition office in Port-au-Prince to smooth the way for his return. In the closing weeks of his three years in exile, Aristide has met almost daily with U.S. officials to discuss economic reconstruction, reform of the brutal police force and formation of a new Cabinet, according to Administration officials and Aristide aides.

Topping the Administration’s priority list is reconciliation between Aristide and the wealthy families who control much of the island’s commerce.

The animosity between Aristide’s impoverished supporters and the tiny elite could hardly be greater. Aristide’s backers hate the wealthy families because they bankrolled the coup that overthrew him. For their part, the elite Haitians hate and fear Aristide because they believe that he will nationalize their businesses.

Despite generations of hatred, U.S. officials believe that Haiti will never become a stable democracy until rich and poor at least learn to tolerate each other.

An Administration official said: “He understands that he has to bring those that are fearful of his return into the political process. He is impressing everyone that he talks to with his understanding of the need for consensus-building.”

Aristide’s supporters insist that the president will not deviate from the message he sounded earlier this month at the U.N. General Assembly: “Yes to reconciliation! No to violence! No to vengeance! . . . Yes to justice!”

Under current plans, there will be U.S. troops in Haiti until after Aristide’s successor is elected and sworn in. That would certainly seem to give Washington plenty of influence over the Aristide government. Indeed, some of the Haitian president’s supporters fear that the United States will try to manipulate their government, especially if Aristide deviates from his present message.

U.S. officials insist that the United States will not interfere. But there is an underlying message that this will be true only as long as Aristide does what he says he will do.

“He is highly intelligent and he seems to have gotten the message,” one Administration official said. “He seems to realize that it is in his own best interest to perform the way we want him to perform.”

For their part, Aristide aides do voice some concern about potential U.S. influence.

Burton V. Wides, a Washington attorney representing the Haitian president, said the Aristide camp is concerned about possible U.S. interference in matters that should be decided by the Haitian government.

“To the extent that there is an effort, however subtle, to take that (control) away from the government and act like the U.S. government is the emperor, there will be trouble,” Wides said.

The U.S. government advised Aristide to slash the size of Haiti’s 7,000-member army, establish a civilian-controlled police force and rid the police of the often-brutal officers who served under the military government. Those steps are also on Aristide’s own priority list, so no disagreement is expected there.

At U.S. urging, Aristide and his economic advisers have developed a $1-billion economic recovery plan that Washington, the European Union, Japan and other donors will help to finance. Despite the Marxist economics that marked his earlier career, Aristide has given a hearty endorsement to U.S. economic priorities, which are intended to pay off Haiti’s international debt, strengthen the private sector and generate jobs for the country’s unemployed poor.

Assuming that Aristide is sincere in what he says he plans to do when he regains office, there should be a substantial honeymoon in relations between the U.S. government and the new Haitian regime.

But some experts say that both sides can expect trouble if Aristide is unable to meet the expectations of a Haitian public, which clearly expects conditions to become far better than they have ever been.