Aristide, in Joyful Return, Calls on Haitians for Reconciliation : Caribbean: Thousands gather to welcome first democratically elected president back from three-year exile. American troops maintain tight security in capital.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide stepped onto Haitian soil Saturday for the first time in more than three years, restoring his presidency and resuming his nation’s fragile attempts at democracy.

He returned, he said, bringing a message of “honor, respect, nonviolence and reconciliation. The 15th of October. What a beautiful day this is . . . a day to celebrate, a day of deliverance, a day of nonviolence.”

The exile for Haiti’s first democratically elected president ended at 12:26 p.m., when he waved and walked down the stairway from his U.S. Air Force Boeing 707 and stepped onto the tarmac.

The airport was closed to the public, with only caretaker Prime Minister Robert Malval and a handful of diplomats and other dignitaries attending. The slightly built Aristide, wearing a blue and red presidential sash, waved, shook hands and saluted when a brief version of the national anthem was played.

Thousands of people lined roads around the fenced-off airport, and thousands more gathered throughout the city, particularly at the Presidential Palace, where Aristide was flown by U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopters to deliver his message of reconciliation.

Accompanying Aristide were 200 diplomats, dignitaries, politicians, journalists and others. Secretary of State Warren Christopher was the ranking American official.

At a news conference later, Christopher called the return of Aristide a culmination of President Clinton’s vow to restore democracy, made during his 1992 presidential campaign.

“I hope all the coup leaders, all the military men in the hemisphere who have designs on their democratic government will take a lesson from this,” Christopher told reporters before returning to Washington.

Aristide said his return to Haiti signaled the end of a three-year reign of military terror and a history of violence and hatred.

But even the military has a place in the new Haiti, Aristide said, urging his followers to “walk hand in hand with (members of) the Haitian military who want peace. To the soldiers and officers,” he said, “I come here to bring peace to you.”

To show that he accepted some military presence, but not too much, there was a small group of Haitian officers sitting near him.

Aristide also said it was time to put aside past disputes with the United States over his former policies and his tactics for returning.

The Haitian leader, who privately had criticized President Clinton for his initial reluctance to totally support his resurrection, thanked the President before leaving Washington on Saturday morning, saying he and the U.S. troops had made his restoration possible.

When he arrived here, he turned to poetry to thank Clinton, telling the tens of thousands or so people filling the streets and parks in front of the palace that “I have bought a bouquet of flowers and sent its perfumed aroma to President Clinton.”

To the hundreds of thousands of Haitians who gathered throughout the capital and the nation it wasn’t the words, no matter how poetically stated, that mattered. Only the second coming of a man several supporters called their “messiah” mattered.

They went wild when they heard via radio that Aristide had landed at the airport, wilder when his helicopter touched down on the palace lawn and wildest when he stepped out and blew kisses.

The crowds, sweating from their frenzy and the 90-degree heat, stretched hands toward the sky, chanted Aristide’s name, danced and waved flags and green, leafy branches as signs of renewal.

But almost as if it were only his presence that counted, people began to drift away from the palace during the brief welcoming ceremonies that preceded his speech.

By the time he was about halfway through the 40-minute speech, given from behind a three-sided bulletproof shield, and had switched from Creole to English, probably 20% of the crowd had drifted away.

Still, for the thousands who continued pushing against the green, wrought-iron fence and strained to hear Aristide’s words, there was emotion aplenty when the man called “TiTid”--or “little Aristide” in Creole--released a small white dove and called out, “Honor, respect. . . . I open my heart and my arms to salute you.”

If there were any regrets over his return, any sign of the nervous conditions his foes said clouded and distorted his judgment, Aristide kept them buried deep.

He was clearly the master of the people. He was, in the words of Dejoie Thibauld, who had waited in the Champs de Mars since Friday afternoon, “my messiah.”

That emotion had brought Aristide and his radical populism nearly 70% of the vote in December, 1990. The implications of such support for a man who clearly wanted to radically reform and weaken the existing system of class privilege, elite economic domination and military power made Aristide vulnerable from the start.

Aristide was only in the seventh month of his five-year term when a military revolt organized first by a then-obscure police major, Michel-Joseph Francois, and later joined by the army commander in chief, Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, drove him from office.

Those two officers and Brig. Gen. Philippe Biamby, the army chief of staff, joined to create one of the most brutal and corrupt regimes Haiti has ever witnessed, a considerable feat in a country ruled almost constantly throughout its existence by slave owners, tyrants and killers.

Francois left Haiti nearly two weeks ago under an agreement negotiated by former President Jimmy Carter that removed the three officers. Biamby and Cedras left on Thursday.

There was one banner printed in English that called for “Justice First, Reconciliation After,” but the clear mood of Aristide and the crowd was to put the past aside and focus on the present and future.

“This is a day on which the sun of democracy never sets,” he called out, “a day of reconciliation. . . . We must be tolerant, (and) that means reconciling the rights of others.”

But there was a hint of warning. “Never, never, never ever again will blood be shed in this country. We are all thirsty for peace. . . . Coups must never occur again.”

The stress on peace and reconciliation brought praise from his American supporters.

“His message of no vengeance, no violence, is the right thing to heal Haiti, attract investment and create jobs to break the cycle of poverty,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson told reporters right before the speech.

Rep. Maxine Waters, the Democratic congresswoman from South Los Angeles and a leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, agreed.

“This is what we have been working for,” she said, “the return of President Aristide to take his rightful place. We have done the right thing.

“It means Haitians finally have a chance for democracy and can move to rebuild the country and build a future for their children. . . . It’s never too late for democracy.”

Although Aristide talked about the imperatives driving Haitian democracy and the need for Haitians to come together and solve the nation’s problems, there was no doubt that his return was the work of Americans and that any solutions for the future lie in their hands.

Dozens of employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development already live here, and more are to come. AID is the chief American agency that will administer and pay for many of the multimillion-dollar development programs Aristide and the international community hope will propel Haiti into a meaningful recovery.

But the most evident symbol of American importance for, if not domination of, this tiny Caribbean nation are the U.S. troops, the soldiers who made Aristide’s physical return possible and who will stay on to protect his life and government.

They were everywhere, American faces looking out from under distinctive American helmets, American hands clutching American weapons and American tanks on every major street and around almost every corner.

The three-plane convoy that brought Aristide home from exile were American jetliners, and most of the 1,000 people allowed onto the palace grounds were Americans--U.S. officials, dignitaries, journalists, politicians and Aristide’s closest American friends.

Because of security concerns and in deference to the important foreigners, ordinary Haitians were kept outside the gates and many were unable to hear the soft-spoken president over an inadequate sound system.

Still, the thousands who stayed in the tropical heat in the Champs de Mars--made up of the parks and 12-lane roadway outside the palace--thundered their approval at every squawk and squeal from the speakers.

Aristide: “Has my (squawk) return (screech) brought about a (inaudible)?”

Crowd: Cheers.

Aristide: (Inaudible) reconciliation?”

Crowd: Large cheers.

“TiTid, TiTid, TiTid,” chanted the people.

“He is my blood, my life,” shrieked one aged woman, her stooped body straightening as she thrust her bone-thin arms into the air.

“He is us, he is us!” one gaunt man boomed. “He belongs to me!”

Aristide was brisk and self-possessed as he walked to the podium in a black suit and the presidential sash. His face was framed by gold-rimmed, wide aviator-style glasses, his eyes shining.

His gapped teeth were brilliantly white as he smiled broadly at his followers.

After his speech, Aristide disappeared into the cavernous palace to lunch with guests. By the time darkness had settled and street parties were developing outside the palace gates, the restored president had not re-emerged.

That was what American and Haitian security officials had recommended. They hope to keep him out of the public eye for the next two or three days to allow for people to settle down and return to a routine.

Part of that routine will be barbed wire and cordons of tanks, armored vehicles and troops positioned all around the palace and on the route between his office and the home he will eventually occupy.

“There are still plenty of people out there who want to kill him,” said Col. Mike Sullivan, commander of the American military police unit here. “I suspect we will protect him for a long time to come.”