1) Breaking News on Haiti

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Website: www.kpfk.org

March 2, 2004
07:00 Pacific Standard Time (USA)

Ira Kurzban, the lawyer who represents President Jean Bertrand Aristide announced on the Sojourner Truth Edition of Morning Review hosted by Margaret Prescod that he had just learned that the Central African Republic (CAR) has shut off President Aristide's phone service. He said that armed members of the French and CAR military are guarding President Aristide and he is not free to leave. This is in direct contradiction to the Bush administration claims that President Aristide was not taken against his will. Mr. Kurzban said: "We are very very concerned about his [President Aristide's] personal safety right now". Mr. Kurzban confirmed that President Aristide and Madame Aristide were kidnapped and taken by force and were not told where they were going until they arrived in CAR.

Mr. Kurzban further said that the alleged kidnapping of the President Aristide and his wife was a violation of international law. He also said that the taking of Madame Aristide, a US citizen, is a felony and that US officials could be brought up on charges. He said that criminal charges are likely to be formally made.

Mr. Kurzban announced that a message was sent to Kofi Annan requesting that President Aristide be allowed to appear before the General Assembly of the UN.

About the alleged letter of resignation that the Bush administration claims was signed by President Aristide, Mr. Kurzban said: "If he signed anything, it was with a gun to his head…the US arranged the circumstance where the wolf was at his door…President Aristide was told that unless he signed the document, he would be left in Haiti to be executed". Mr. Aristide's lawyer has yet to receive a copy of the alleged letter of resignation.

Referring to the alleged letter of resignation, also on today's show, Michelle Karshan, the foreign press liaison for the National Palace of Haiti (under President Aristide) said that from what she knows of President Aristide: "Those words were not written by him." She said that upon arrival in the CAR President Aristide quoted Toussaint L'Ovature, the leader of the Haitian Revolution. The quote was taken from a statement that Toussaint made when he as arrested by the French. Toussaint later died in a French prison.

Ms. Karshan further claimed that the jubilant crowds welcoming the coup plotters shown on TV and print media across the world are part of the 4% of the Haitian population who are the elite, along with former members of the Army and those with ties to the Army. Ms. Karshan said that the vast majority of Haitian people oppose the coup. President Aristide abolished the Army upon his return to Haiti in 1994.

It was reported on the show by Andaiye of Red Thread based in Georgetown, Guyana that a network of women Caribbean NGO's have expressed grief and outrage at the events in Haiti, and have sent a list of demands to Kofi Annan, the Bush Administration and CARICOM.

2) Haiti rebels threaten more strife
CNN March 1, 2004

Supporters of Haitian rebel leader Guy Philippe burned paintings from the country's former army headquarters Tuesday as Philippe declared himself the country's new police chief and threatened to arrest Prime Minister Yvon Neptune.

"We have the base of the police with us," he said. "Almost 90 percent of the police are with us now, working together and trying to take the right decisions."

Philippe also demanded the surrender of 20 men he said were leaders of armed gangs loyal to Haiti's exiled president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and he called for the country's interim president to re-establish Haiti's army.
Aristide disbanded the army, which overthrew him in 1991, after he was returned to office in 1994.

There was no immediate comment from the government of interim President Boniface Alexandre.

In Washington, Vice President Dick Cheney said he is happy that Aristide is out of office -- but he denied Aristide's accusation that the United States forced him from power.

Meanwhile, a U.S. State Department spokesman said the United States would not recognize Philippe as head of Haiti's national police.

And Haiti's longtime dictator, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, told a Miami television station that he wants to return to his homeland but denied he is interested in seeking the country's presidency.

After his supporters entered Port-au-Prince on Monday, Philippe set up shop in what was once the headquarters of Haiti's armed forces.

Under Aristide, the building was Haiti's ministry for women's affairs.

Philippe's supporters pulled paintings out of the building, located across from the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince, and tossed them on a bonfire Tuesday afternoon.

U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Washington did not recognize Philippe's claim to authority and called on the rebels to lay down their arms.

"There is an orderly and constitutional political process under way in Haiti," Boucher said.

"That process needs to be respected by all Haitians, but we're glad to see the violence in decreasing. But the rebels have no role to play in this process and they need to lay down their arms and go home."

Boucher said there was a distinction between the democratic opposition groups seeking a role in a new Haitian government and "groups that perpetrated violence so widely and broadly against the Haitian people in recent weeks."

"We all know that these various individuals involved in this armed violence, many of them have a very unsavory
history, to say the least," Boucher said. "We do not believe that those people are welcome in the political process."
But Philippe said he would not take orders from other countries.

"This time, we won't take this pressure," he said. "If they want to kill me, they can come and kill me. I'm ready to die for my country."

Philippe called on the interim president to re-establish the Haitian army, though he acknowledged that restoring the military would take time, and he called on the international community to assist in its reconstitution.

Haiti's armed forces overthrew Aristide, the country's first democratically elected president, in 1991, and the United States restored him to office in 1994.
Early Sunday, faced with a rebellion that was spreading rapidly toward Port-au-Prince, Aristide resigned and left Haiti aboard a U.S. jet. But after landing in the Central African Republic, Aristide told CNN that he was forced into exile by the United States.

Aristide says he was forced out of Haiti in a "real coup d'etat" led by the United States, in what he called a "modern way to have a modern kidnapping."

"I was told that to avoid bloodshed I'd better leave," he said in an interview on CNN Monday.

The leader of the Central African Republic called his decision to grant asylum to Aristide, "a humanitarian act" but in a statement released Tuesday also expressed solidarity with Haitians who are trying to rebuild their government.
General Francois Bozize said his nation "welcomes a person in difficulty and in need to find a true hospitality."

In an interview Tuesday with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Cheney said that accusation is "simply not true." But he added, "I'm happy he's gone."

"I think the Haitian people are better off for it," he said. "I think they now have an opportunity to elect a new government, and that's as it should be."

U.S., French and Canadian troops have been dispatched to Haiti to restore order after Aristide's ouster, and a U.S. Marine contingent moved to secure the capital's seaport Tuesday.

The United States has warned the interim government that "violence will not be tolerated," the State Department official said.

"So far it is working," the official said, adding, "We have made clear to the rebels they need to be part of the solution, not part of the problem."

Meanwhile, Duvalier -- whose family ruled Haiti from 1957 to 1986 -- told Miami television station WFOR that he wants to return to his homeland as soon as possible.

Duvalier has lived in exile in France since his overthrow in 1986. He said he requested a diplomatic passport several weeks ago, while Aristide was still in power.

Asked if he plans to return to Haiti to run for president, Duvalier said, "That is not on my agenda."

-- CNN Correspondent Lucia Newman and producers Ingrid Arnesen and Elise Labott contributed to this report.

03/01/2004 19:18 GMT-5

3) Rebel Says He's New Haiti Military Chief
By PAISLEY DODDS and IAN JAMES
.c The Associated Press

Guy Philippe, head of the Haitian National Revolutionary Liberation Front, has his shoes shined in
the parking lot of a hotel in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, on February 25, 2004.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - Rebel leader Guy Philippe on Tuesday declared
himself the new chief of Haiti's military, which had been disbanded by ousted
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Flanked by other rebel leaders and senior officers of Haiti's police force,
Philippe told a news conference: ``I am the chief.'' Asked what he meant, he
said, ``the military chief.''

``I am not interested in politics,'' he said. ``The president is the legal
president, so we follow his orders.''

Later Philippe said he would use his new self-ascribed powers to arrest
Aristide's prime minister, Yvon Neptune. The crowd that had assembled chanted:
``Arrest Neptune.''

But a U.S. government official discounted Philippe's potential for leadership
in Haiti.

``He is not in control of anything but a ragtag band of people,'' said
Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, speaking to the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee

The buildup of the international presence in Haiti will make Philippe's role
``less and less central in Haitian life. And I think he will probably want to
make himself scarce,'' Noriega said.

Philippe also said the rebel forces that participated in the uprising that
sent Aristide into African exile would disarm.

Haiti's Supreme Court Chief Justice Boniface Alexandre was installed as
interim leader Sunday, just hours after Aristide fled under pressure from the
United States and France. Alexandre has kept a low profile since.

Exiled Haitian dictator Jean-Claude ``Baby Doc'' Duvalier, meanwhile, said he
wanted to return to his homeland.

``This is my country,'' Duvalier told Miami's WFOR-CBS4 television in an
interview in Paris. ``I'm ready to put myself at the disposal of the Haitian
people.''

But Duvalier said he doesn't plan to run for president.

``That is not on my agenda,'' he said through a translator.

The deposed dictator said he requested a diplomatic passport several weeks
ago and is in constant contact with people in Haiti.

``I think I'm getting close and that I will soon have the opportunity to go
back to my country,'' he said.

Duvalier had been named president for life at age 18 after the death in 1971
of his father, Francois, known as ``Papa Doc.'' Tens of thousands were killed
during the 29-year Duvalier dynasty and hundreds of millions of dollars stolen.

Accused of human rights violations and stealing at least $120 million from
the national treasury, Duvalier fled to France in 1986.

Philippe, a former provincial police chief during Aristide's tenure, has said
he wants to reconstitute the army that ousted Aristide in 1991. Aristide
disbanded the military in 1995, a year after he was returned to power by 20,000
U.S. troops.

Human Rights Watch has said Philippe has a ``dubious human rights record,''
pointing to executions of gang members committed by a deputy while he was
police chief of Port-au-Prince's Delmas section.

Aristide, currently in the Central African Republic, told The Associated
Press in a telephone interview Monday that he was ``forced to leave'' Haiti by
U.S. military forces. He added that they would ``start shooting and be killing''
if he refused, but it was unclear if he was referring to rebels or U.S. agents.

American officials dismissed Aristide's claim. Secretary of State Colin
Powell called the allegations ``absolutely baseless, absurd.'' U.S. officials
acknowledged privately, however, that Aristide was told that if he remained in
Haiti, U.S. forces would not protect him from the rebels who wanted to arrest him
and put him on trial for corruption and murder.

Backtracking from earlier comments, French Defense Minister Michele
Alliot-Marie said Aristide was ``surely not'' under French military surveillance in
Bangui.

``There have been French troops in the Central African Republic for several
months,'' she told France-Info radio.

But their mission ``has nothing to do with the presence of President
Aristide,'' she said. ``They do not have a mission either of protection or security.''

Aristide and the president of the Central African Republic, Francois Bozize,
were expected to discuss Aristide's final asylum plans in an unknown third
country later Tuesday, Communications Minister Parfait Mbaye said.

U.S. plans for a quiet, orderly transition in Haiti appeared threatened,
despite the arrival of hundreds of American, French and Canadian soldiers as an
interim peacekeeping force. U.S. Marines and French troops have secured key
sites around the capital, Port-au-Prince.

At least 100 people have died in the uprising that erupted Feb. 5.

Meanwhile, the prospect of peacekeepers - the other arm of U.S. strategy -
appeared reduced to a minimal expression, with Marine Col. Dave Berger saying
that his 200 forces from the 8th Battalion, based in Camp Lejeune, N.C., would
not disarm rebels or the pro-Aristide militants and they would not police the
city.

The civilian opposition also raised concerns about an orderly transition when
some of its leaders showed a near adoration for the rebels and contempt for
an international transition plan.

The only encouraging sign was the relief among people in the capital.

Callers flooded talk radio programs with appeals for rebel help in
neighborhoods still dominated by pro-Aristide gangs that terrorized the city.

Scattered looting continued, police cleared the city of barricades, but
gunfire continued crackling in some neighborhoods and bound, executed bodies were
found in the streets.

In the capital, there were reports of reprisal killings of Aristide
supporters accused of terrorizing people during his rule. An Associated Press reporter
saw four bodies at Carrefour on the outskirts of the capital - three of them
with hands tied and bullet wounds in the head.

Powell said he did not want some rebel leaders to take any role in a new
government.

``Some of these individuals we would not want to see re-enter civil society
in Haiti because of their past records, and this is something we will have to
work through,'' Powell said.

Amnesty International called Monday for international peacekeepers to arrest
rebel leaders Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a former death squad leader convicted of
murders while in exile, and Jean Pierre Baptiste, also known as Jean Tatoune,
who escaped from jail after being sentenced to two life sentences for the 1994
massacre of 15 Aristide supporters.

Chamblain said the rebels planned patrols Tuesday, possibly to the Cite
Soleil seaside slum that is a stronghold of die-hard Aristide followers.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld estimated that between 1,500 and 2,000
U.S. troops would go to Haiti for a ``relatively short period.'' They would
participate in an interim force, which could include as many as 5,000 troops from
several countries, that would stay until replaced by U.N. peacekeepers.

Chile said it was sending 120 special forces to Haiti on Wednesday, the first
part of a contingent of 300 Chileans to join the international security force.

There were no clashes between the rebels and the American and French troops,
who were establishing security at diplomatic missions and other sites.

Aristide's home in suburban Tabarre, meanwhile, was looted and trashed, but
he continued to cast a long shadow over Haiti.

Aristide abruptly left Haiti early Sunday and was flown aboard a contracted
U.S.-government plane to the impoverished Central African Republic.

With rebels closing in on the capital, Aristide may have felt his life was in
danger. After he left, thousands converged on the plaza outside the National
Palace, shouting ``Liberty!'' and ``Aristide is gone!'' as a 70-man rebel
convoy arrived from the western town of Gonaives, where the rebellion erupted.

Civilian opposition leaders met with rebels for hours at a Port-au-Prince
hotel Monday. The opposition, angered by poverty, corruption and crime, pushed
for Aristide to leave for the good of Haiti's 8 million people - but had
distanced themselves from the rebels.

Associated Press reporters Michael Norton in Kingston, Jamaica; Mark
Stevenson in Port-au-Prince; and Joseph Benamsse in Bangui, Central African Republic,
contributed to this report.

03/02/04 14:41 EST

4) Exiled 'Baby Doc' Seeks Return to Haiti
.c The Associated Press

Jean-Claude ``Baby Doc'' Duvalier at his 1980 file photo

MIAMI (AP) - Exiled Haitian dictator Jean-Claude ``Baby Doc'' Duvalier told a
television reporter he wants to return to his homeland now that President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide has fled.

``This is my country,'' Duvalier told WFOR-CBS4 on Monday in an interview in
Paris. ``I'm ready to put myself at the disposal of the Haitian people.''

But Duvalier said he doesn't plan to run for president.

``That is not on my agenda,'' Duvalier said through a translator.

The deposed dictator said he requested a diplomatic passport several weeks
ago and is in constant contact with people in Haiti. Accused of human rights
violations, mass killings and stealing at least $120 million from the national
treasury, Duvalier fled to France in 1986, 15 years after succeeding his father,
the late Francois ``Papa Doc'' Duvalier.

``I think I'm getting close and that I will soon have the opportunity to go
back to my country,'' he said.

Duvalier also said he was not involved with the rebels who helped force
Aristide out of office Sunday.

He applauded the ``prompt action of the international community,'' welcomed
the presence of U.S. Marines and said the country should stabilize quickly.

But Reed Brody, special counsel for the group Human Rights Watch, said:
``Duvalier's return to Haiti would be a disaster, unless it is to face justice.''

``His dictatorial regime was responsible for thousands of political killings
and arbitrary detentions,'' Brody said. ``It would be such a step back for
Haiti to have Duvalier play a role in Haitian politics.''

Duvalier had been named president for life at age 18 following the 1971 death
of his father. Tens of thousands were killed during the 29-year Duvalier
dynasty and hundreds of millions of dollars stolen. Brody said the exact number of
killed is unknown.

03/02/04 14:47 EST

5) US Rejects Haiti Rebels' Power Bids
By SONYA ROSS
.c The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration rejected on Tuesday bids for power in Haiti by rebels and insisted they lay down their arms and return to their homes.

There is a political process under way to pick up after the departure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and ``the rebels do not have a role in this process,'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

``The rebels have to lay down their arms and go home,'' Boucher said in rejecting a declaration by rebel leader Guy Philippe that he had become the new chief of Haiti's military and other assertions of power by other rebels.

Roger Noriega, the assistant secretary of state for the region, said of Philippe: ``He is not in control of anything but a ragtag band of people.''

The buildup of the international presence in Haiti will make Philippe's role ``less and less central in Haitian life,'' Noriega told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. ``And I think he will probably want to make himself scarce.''

Asked when that would be, Noriega said within the next few days. ``We have sent that message to him. He obviously hasn't received it.''

The Bush administration, meanwhile, tried to set aside the controversy over Aristide's departure from Haiti, expressing little interest in his claims that he was forced to go into exile by the American military.

``I think the story's been addressed,'' White House press secretary Scott McClellan said, referring to emphatic administration denials. ``The decision to leave was Mr. Aristide's to make.''

Aristide's resignation letter said he was leaving ``in order to avoid a bloodbath,'' according to a U.S. translation from Creole. ``I accept to leave, with the hope that there will be life and not death.'' A copy of the letter was provided by the Bush administration.

But Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president, said he thought there ought to be some investigation of the claim that Aristide was forced out and escorted by U.S. troops.

``I don't know the truth of it. I really don't,'' Kerry said on ``Today'' on NBC. ``But I think it needs to be explored and we need to know the truth of what happened.''

McClellan responded to Kerry by launching a fresh attack on Aristide's leadership.

``It was Aristide's failed government that empowered armed gangs to control the country,'' McClellan said. ``It was a failed government that condoned official corruption, including drug trafficking. it was a failed government that engaged in acts of political violence against a peaceful democratic opposition.''

The spokesman declined to say what evidence the administration has to support his claim that Aristide's government condoned drug trafficking

President Bush called President Jacques Chirac of France and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil to review developments in Haiti.

McClellan said U.S. officials were not trying to contact Aristide. ``There are some absurd accusations that some are choosing to repeat and they do nothing to help the Haitian people through this difficult period,'' McClellan said.

Black lawmakers and others demanded an investigation into the way the administration treated Aristide in the hours before he left his country and turned up in the Central African Republic. They built their objections around repeated claims by Aristide that U.S. officials forced him out.

With Aristide gone, and rebels who brought him down inside Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, the first significant U.S. military presence began arriving Monday.

The Pentagon said as many as 400 Marines were there, with hundreds more to come. As many as 2,000 U.S. troops could eventually go to Haiti to help curb the chaos, but Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said U.S. troops would remain in Haiti only for a short time. An interim international force that could include up to 5,000 troops from France, Canada and elsewhere was expected to stay until replaced by a U.N. peacekeeping force.

Aristide told The Associated Press that his resignation was coerced. He said U.S. agents who came to his home ``were telling me that if I don't leave they would start shooting and be killing in a matter of time.'' It was unclear whether Aristide meant that the rebels or U.S. agents would begin shooting.

``I was forced to leave,'' Aristide said in a telephone interview from Africa.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and Rumsfeld denied that, but U.S. officials acknowledged privately that Aristide was told that if he remained in Haiti, U.S. forces would not protect him from rebels who wanted him put on trial on allegations of murder and corruption.

03/02/04 18:35 EST

6) Did U.S. Push or Pull Aristide from Power?
Marty Logan
http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=22666

As rebel leader Guy Philippe declared himself Haiti's "military chief" Tuesday, speculation continued to fly over the U.S. role in deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's flight from power Sunday.

MONTREAL, Mar 2 (IPS) - As rebel leader Guy Philippe declared himself Haiti's "military chief" Tuesday, speculation continued to fly over the U.S. role in deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's flight from power Sunday.

More than one observer suggested that now that the champion of the poor in the western hemisphere's poorest nation was gone, it was time to look ahead to rebuilding -- but first to disarming the various armed factions in Haiti.

On Monday, Aristide told CNN (the Cable News Network) that U.S. soldiers forced him to board a plane that landed in Africa 20 hours later.

"I called this a coup d'etat the modern way, to have a modern kidnapping," said Aristide. "We had to leave and spent 20 hours in an American plane not knowing where they were going with us until they told us 20 minutes before we landed in the Central African Republic".

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell denied that version of events. Aristide "was not kidnapped", Powell said. "We did not force him onto the airplane. He went onto the airplane willingly. And that's the truth," he told reporters Monday.

Hours after Aristide's flight, the United Nations Security Council authorised a multinational intervention force for the country.

On Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he knew nothing more about Aristide's departure, adding, " I hope this time the international community will go in for the long haul and not a quick turn-around . it may take years and I hope we will have the patience to do it".

Tuesday morning a spokesman for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) he did not think the anti-Aristide rebels joined with Washington to depose the embattled leader.

"A lot of people are making the link from the rebels to the United States and saying the United States had a role in him (Aristide) being forced out. Do you make that link?" the CARICOM spokesman, Jamaican Foreign Minister KD Knight, was asked.

"No, I haven't made that link. I've heard that link being made but I haven't made it. We are just going on what's happened on the ground, what's evident to all onlookers, the behaviour of the rebels, the behaviour of the opposition," answered Knight.

CARICOM criticised the world community last week for not sending a military force to Haiti sooner, and Knight suggested Tuesday the group might not recognise a governing authority in Haiti -- one of 15 CARICOM members -- that included the rebels.

The regional body was to meet Tuesday to discuss how to officially react to the events in Haiti.

One non-governmental observer said the international community will likely make no meaningful contribution to the island country, even now that Philippe -- a former policeman and army cadet who fled the country after a failed coup attempt against Aristide in 2001 -- and other known human rights violators appear to have assumed some power.

"The international community, by which we mean in the case of Haiti the United States, France and to a lesser extent Canada, have already made it absolutely clear that they're not going to intervene in any positive way in Haiti," said Charles Arthur, director of the UK organisation, Haiti Support Group.

Instead, the role of the international armed force "will be to protect whatever assets the international community believes it has, which in short will be the main infrastructure of the capital, the embassies, the big businesses, the areas where the rich people live . the basic infrastructure of the country", he added.

"The peacekeeping, the law and order, in a de facto fashion, will be the preserve of whoever is in charge of the Haitian Army and the Haitian police force, which it looks like is going to be Guy Philippe," said Arthur.

But Tuesday, U.S. State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher rejected Philippe's claim. "The rebels have to lay down their arms and go home," said Boucher, according to Associated Press (AP).

Arthur argued the world should not mourn the departure of Aristide. "Clearly the United States is the main player in getting him to leave. Whether the left and progressive forces all over the world should be focussing on the issue of the Aristide presidency, I don't think so".

"In my opinion, based on working with grassroots organisations in Haiti over the last 12 years, Aristide hasn't been able to deliver the demands and aspirations of the 85 percent of (the people who are poor) in Haiti. And this is one of the reasons why it was possible for the United States to remove him from power," according to Arthur.

Haitian politics has been blocked since the opposition parties refused to participate following 2000 elections that rights groups and bodies like the Organisation of American States (OAS) declared flawed.

But more than one week ago, and with Philippe and other heavily-armed rebels advancing on the capital Port-au-Prince from the north, Aristide agreed to a CARICOM action plan that would see him stay in office until his term ended in 2006 as part of a power-sharing government with the opposition.

But his opponents refused to accept the strategy.

"I think they (the United States) facilitated his leaving certainly, but I don't think the United States was responsible for his leaving," said Carolyn Fick, a professor of history at Montreal's Concordia University.

"There were negotiations and they put pressure on Aristide but so did the internal situation in Haiti put pressure on him, in spite of his declaration to the contrary," added Fick, author of 'The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution From Below'.

"He's gone but the point is now, where to go. I think that it has to be a civil and political solution. The rebels have not put down their arms. They promised to do so -- they haven't. I don't think they will until they get guarantees. My feeling is that they're going to negotiate for the restoration of the Haitian Army."

According to another observer, "I don't think anybody knows exactly what occurred. It's clear that there was a tremendous amount of international pressure put on Aristide and in the end I don't know what finally convinced him to leave; whether in fact he had been trapped or whether he was convinced simply to leave because his life was at stake and the lives of so many thousands of other people might have been at stake".

Added Leslie G. Desmangles, a professor of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, "(Aristide) left and the question as to whether he was taken away or whether he left on his own I think at this point is rather moot, because what's important at the moment is that he's gone and that now we have to look forward to reshaping the politics and the government of the country".

That tremendous task will have to begin with basic services. For example, aid group Oxfam said Tuesday "at least 80,000 people in Port de Paix and 60,000 people in Cap Haitien (both in the country's north) have no access to clean water, many others are short of food and the threat of disease due to poor sanitation is growing".

Groups stopped delivering aid because of insecurity earlier this month, and "lack of access to sufficient quantities of clean water combined with the general lack of adequate sanitation could soon lead to disastrous outbreaks of water-related disease", added the Oxfam statement.

7) Don't fall for Washington's spin on Haiti
March 1, 2004
By Jeffrey Sachs

The crisis in Haiti is another case of brazen US
manipulation of a small, impoverished country with the
truth unexplored by journalists. In the nearly
universal media line on the Haitian revolt, President
Jean- Bertrand Aristide was portrayed as an
undemocratic leader who betrayed Haiti's democratic
hopes and thereby lost the support of his erstwhile
backers. He "stole" elections and intransigently
refused to address opposition concerns. As a result he
had to leave office, which he did at the insistence of

the US and France. Unfortunately, this is a gravely
distorted view.

President George Bush's foreign policy team came into
office intent on toppling Mr Aristide, long reviled by
powerful US conservatives such as former senator Jesse
Helms who obsessively saw him as another Fidel Castro
in the Caribbean. Such critics fulminated when
President Bill Clinton restored Mr Aristide to power in
1994, and they succeeded in getting US troops withdrawn
soon afterwards, well before the country could be
stabilised. In terms of help to rebuild Haiti, the US
Marines left behind about eight miles of paved roads
and essentially nothing else. In the meantime, the
so-called "opposition", a coterie of rich Haitians
linked to the preceding Duvalier regime and former (and
perhaps current) CIA operatives, worked Washington to
lobby against Mr Aristide.

In 2000, Haiti held parliamentary and then presidential
elections, unprecedented in their scope. Mr Aristide's
party, Fanmi Lavalas, clearly won the election,
although candidates who won a plurality rather than a
majority, and who should have faced a second-round
election, also gained seats. Objective observers
declared the elections broadly successful, albeit
flawed.

Mr Aristide won the presidential election later that
year, in a contest the US media now reports was
"boycotted by the opposition" and hence, not
legitimate. This is a cruel joke to those who know
Haiti, where Mr Aristide was swept in with an
overwhelming mandate and the opposition, such as it
was, ducked the elections. Duvalier thugs hardly
constituted a winning ticket and as such, did not even
try. Nor did they have to. Mr Aristide's foes in Haiti
benefited from tight links with the incoming Bush team,
which told Mr Aristide it would freeze all aid unless
he agreed with the opposition over new elections for
the contested Senate seats, among other demands. The
wrangling led to the freezing of Dollars 500m in
emergency humanitarian aid from the US, the World Bank,
the Inter- American Development Bank and the
International Monetary Fund.

The tragedy, or joke, is that Mr Aristide agreed to
compromise, but the opposition simply balked; it was
never the right time to hold elections, for example,
because of "security" problems, they said. Whatever the
pretext, the US maintained its aid freeze and the
opposition maintained a veto over international aid.
Cut off from bilateral and multilateral financing,
Haiti's economy went into a tailspin.

All this is being replayed before our eyes. As Haiti
slipped into deeper turmoil last month, Caribbean
leaders called for a power-sharing compromise between
Mr Aristide and the opposition. Once again, Mr Aristide
agreed but the opposition merely demanded the president
step down - reportedly rejecting even US Secretary of
State Colin Powell's requests to compromise. But rather
than defending Mr Aristide and dealing with opposition
intransigence, the White House announced the president
should step down.

The ease with which the US thereby brought down another
Latin American democracy is stunning. What has been the
CIA's role among the anti-Aristide rebels? How much US
money went from US institutions and government agencies
to help foment this uprising? Why did the White House
abandon the Caribbean compromise proposal it endorsed
just days before? These questions have not been asked.
Then again, we live in an age when entire wars can be
launched on phony pretences with few questions asked.

What should happen now is unlikely to pass. The United
Nations should help restore Mr Aristide to power for
his remaining two years in office, making clear that
yesterday's events were an illegal power grab. Second,
the US should call on the opposition, which is largely
a US construct, to stop the violence immediately and
unconditionally. Third, after years of literally
starving the people of Haiti, the long-promised and
long-frozen aid flows of Dollars 500m should start
immediately. These steps would rescue a dying democracy
and avert a possible bloodbath.

The writer is director of the Earth Institute at
Columbia University

Copyright 2004

http://news.ft.com/home/us

8) Haiti as Target Practice
How the US Press Missed the Story
By HEATHER WILLIAMS COUNTERPUNCH
March 1, 2004
http://www.counterpunch.org/williams03012004.html

"The fact that the group in charge of Haiti policy today in
the State Department has been literally gunning for
Aristide since before his initial election as a champion of
democracy in 1990 has been left all but unmentioned by the
US press."

Now that bodies are littering the streets of Cap Haitien
and Port Au Prince, major print news outlets have seen well
enough to send a handful of cameramen and correpondents to
send back news of the crisis. Even so, the campaign of
violence that has finally ousted Haitian President Aristide
has been investigated and reported to the American public
with appalling indolence. The official reasoning appears to
be that if Haiti is the hemisphere's eternal basket case-a
dismal repository of poverty where there is no future-- how
on earth could its past possibly matter?

But those who view Haiti's current violence as merely one
of an eternal humanitarian crisis in temporary overdrive
miss the story. It is no simple tale of a corrupt regime
collapsing under the weight of popular anger and bad
management. A cursory glance at events of the last fourteen
years suggests that the fall of the Aristide regime was a
foregone conclusion at the entrance of President George W.
Bush and the installation of a cabal of appointees with a
grim record of utilizing official and covert channels to
destabilize uncooperative governments in the Western
Hemisphere. What is immediately ominous about the current
crisis in Haiti is the likely prospect that leaders of
armed groups making a final assault on the capital will
play important roles in a post-Aristide order. Such armed
groups include the Tontons Macoutes, the gunmen who
viciously supervised repression under both father and son
Duvaliers' dictatorships until 1986. They also include
members of the disbanded Haitian army that held power for
three years following the coup against President Aristide
in 1991, and the FRAPH death squads that mowed down the
ranks of democratic civil society during that period,
leaving over 3,000 dead and thousands more in exile. What
is also now worrisome about this crisis is what it likely
indicates about the intentions of the U.S. State Department
and security apparatus elsewhere in the Caribbean.

Now that Aristide's government, protected by a flimsy
police force and a smattering of civilian gangs, has
collapsed, quiet references in news stories and opinion
pieces suggest that editors are wishing that perhaps they
had a few more questions along the way about what indeed
was going on in Haiti. Notably, until mid-February of this
year The New York Times instructed its readers, for weeks
on end, with no evidence whatsoever, that the armed groups
referred to generically and occasionally quite
sympathetically as "rebels" represent a home-grown
anti-Aristide opposition. For weeks the New York Tinmes
used AP and Reuters dispatches to present the Haitian
crisis as one simply of domestic protest and unrest.

It wasn't until February 15 that the NYT's own reporter,
Lydia Polgreen bothered to mention that the group marching
on Gonaïves known a the Cannibal Army was led by "sinister
figures from [Haiti's] past," including the infamous
Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a soldier who led death squads in
the 1980s through the mid-1990s and was convicted in
absentia for his involvement in the murder of Antoine
Izméry, a well-known pro-democracy activist. Also
unexplored by the same reporters were reports that the
groups terrorizing Gonaïves had come from across the
border, from the Dominican Republic. Given this knowledge,
it is curious that no reporter then bothered to inquire how
these groups obtained ample caches of brand-new M-16s,
M-60s, armor piercing weapons, all-terrain vehicles, and
rocket-propelled grenade launchers-equipment far beyond the
reach of the Haiti's own impecunious security forces.

Was the story too dangerous to investigate? Was the
situation indecipherable? Was the prospect of a weak regime
giving way to another in the hemisphere's poorest country
just not a story worth the time and effort? The tragedy of
this episode is that much of it was abundantly transparent.
Running a sixty-second web search on any of the principals
involved leads one to a fetid two-decade history of CIA and
U.S. ultra-right subterfuge in Haiti. The fact that the
group in charge of Haiti policy today in the State
Department has been literally gunning for Aristide since
before his initial election as a champion of democracy in
1990 has been left all but unmentioned by the press. Also
forgotten is the fact that members of the armed groups
burning their way through Haiti's cities today include
groups that, (according to myriad sources including sworn
testimony before Congress by U.S. officials, reporters, and
reports of Haitian recipients of covert aid,) were
funneling drugs to the U.S. while in the pay of U.S.
intelligence agents.

The point is not that the public has been lied to by the
government. Governments lie, particularly this
administration. The point is that even those on the left
who are indignant about systematic misinformation elsewhere
have not bothered to jog their memories on Haiti to smell
the sulfur emanating from this episode,. The press
apparatus reporting on the Caribbean is either too broken
or too racist to remember that Haiti's anguish is connected
to forces quite beyond poor judgment or even bad will by
President Aristide. The ease with which armed thugs have
upended a civilian regime, eliciting only murmurs of
disquiet from onlookers abroad who ought to know better is
cause for worry. Surely zealots in charge of U.S. foreign
policy have taken note. If it's this easy to destabilize
Haiti , Cuba will unquestionably appear a more viable
target for direct intervention in the not-so-distant
future.

At least four lines of inquiry were left nearly untouched
in the last four weeks of reporting of Haiti.

First, no one bothered to ask who the rebels were and why
they were advancing on major cities. If in fact they
represented a broad opposition, as reporters readily
implied or stated openly, why were the rebels unable to
furnish the barest credible details of their demands, their
civilian bases of support, and their connections to leaders
of civil society groups? Despite literally weeks of lead
time, no Haitians in positions of authority, no public
figures, and no Haitian intellectuals living here or on the
island emerged in press stories as sources of reliable
information. Haitians who were quoted in news stories
tended to be taxi drivers presumably shuttling skittish
reporters from hotel to dinner, or randomly-chosen
opponents of Aristide on the street. Predictably, such
individuals expressed generic discontent with the
government. Thus, even though a number of more respectable
political opponents of President Aristide were claiming
that armed groups outside the capital were not acting on
their behalf, the story by default became a spurious tale
of an embattled people challenging a repressive and
incompetent government. Stories closer to the truth
supported by evidence were likely never taken up because
such messiness would necessitate a greater number of column
inches than editors were going to allot to Haiti.

The second instance of media negligence was the
near-universal acceptance of the idea in the
English-language press that Aristide's government had lost
all popular legitimacy due to reported irregularities in
the 2000 parliamentary elections. This is an extraordinary
leap given the monkey business plaguing U.S. elections of
the same year. According to Tom Reeves, the admittedly
poorly-attended elections were not the stuff of grand vote
larceny. "All sides," he wrote in a very fine article last
fall in Dollars and Sense, "concede that Aristide won the
presidential ballot with 92 percent of the voteThe sole
disagreement is over run-off elections for seven senators
from Aristide's part who obtained pluralities but not
majorities in the first round. The seven senators
eventually resigned, making way for new elections."

Nonetheless, these electoral "abuses" were grounds for the
Bush administration and pliant international partners in
Europe to suspend hundreds of millions of dollars in credit
lines and aid to Haiti. Allegations of fraud were used to
permanently block the release of $400 million in
already-approved loans from the Interamerican Development
Bank. The IMF, World Bank, and European Union were also
pressed to cut off crucial lines of credit. Meanwhile,
Haiti was brutally taken to task for its external financial
obligations, emptying its coffers in July 2003 to pay $32
million in debt service arrears. As a final blow, Haiti's
ability to conserve any remaining foreign reserves was
foreclosed by agreements signed with the U.S. government
under President Clinton in 1996. These obliged Haiti to
abolish tariffs on U.S. imports in the name of what was
curiously called "free trade" but was in fact commodity
dumping by U.S. exporters. Under threat of huge fines,
Haiti was obliged to accept the import of foodstuffs priced
far below the cost of production. (Direct subsidies to U.S.
farmers since the mid-1990s have averaged over $30 billion
a year.) In a nation where the majority of the population
works in agriculture, this all but shut down production in
the rice-producing northwest of Haiti, as well as among
livestock producers throughout the country. Under these
conditions, it stands to reason that no government could
dodge the discontent of the population.

The third line of neglected inquiry was the question of who
the injured "opposition" was in Haiti, on whose behalf this
official bloodletting took place. According to Stan Goff,
whose thorough article appeared in on this Counterpunch
site on February 9 of this year, the fifteen-party
anti-Aristide coalition known as "Convergence" includes
"every faction of the Haitian dominant class, factions who
are generally at war with one another." Despite anemic
support from the voting public (never approaching even 20
percent in opinion polls conducted even by the U.S.) what
apparently they were able to converge on was three million
dollars a year in funding in from the International
Republican Institute, a Republican-party backed arm of the
National Endowment for Democracy.

Finally, no one has asked questions about the wildly
partisan officials in U.S. State Department now running
U.S. policy in the Caribbean and Latin America. These
include such Blast-from-the-Past supporters of Reagan era
highjinks in Central America as Otto Reich, John
Negroponte, Elliot Abrams, and (before his ignominious
departure last summer) John Poindexter. The most visible in
recent weeks on Haiti has been Assistant Secretary of State
for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega, a man who has
had Aristide in his gunsights for over a decade. As senior
staff member for the Committee on Foreign Relations of the
U.S. Senate, and advisor to Senator Jesse Helms and John
Burton, he was party to a three-year campaign to prevent to
defame Aristide and prevent his return to power; all the
while CIA-backed thugs left carnage in the streets daily in
Port Au Prince. In his capacity in the State Department
since 2003, and for two years before that as the U.S.
Permanent Representative to the OAS, he has aggressively
advertised his intention to oust Aristide a second time.

For example, in April of last year, speaking at the Council
of the Americas conference in Washington, he linked U.S.
policies in Haiti to those in Venezuela and Cuba. He
congratulated the OAS for overcoming "irrelevance in the
past years" by adopting the Inter-American Democratic
Charter. Article 20, he said, lays out a series of actions
to be takenin the event that a member state should fail to
uphold the essential elements of democratic life. He added
the "President Chavez and President Aristide have contributed
willfully to a polarized and confrontational environment.
It is my fervent hope," he added ominously, "that the good
people of Cuba are studying the Democratic Charter."

Given the inability of Haitians at present to question the
direction of whatever succession takes place in the coming
weeks, the question of how fully Noriega and his fanatical
friends will control U.S. foreign policy in the Americas is
crucial. Secretary of State Colin Powell has been cravenly
circumspect in his statements on Haiti, straddling the line
between encouraging Aristide to step down and discouraging
those who would involve the U.S. extensively in any
transition effort or state-building mission. What Powell's
late entrance into the situation suggests strongly is that
Latin America and the Caribbean are considered so
insignificant that Noriega and his half-cocked cronies are
generally left to play with matches until the fire alarm
goes off. In this case, Florida voters were that alarm.
Undoubtedly higher-ups in the White House were a bit uneasy
at the prospect of thousands of Haitians fleeing chaos
being thrown back into the sea by the US Coast Guard in an
election year. But the modus operandi of Noriega and
company is unmistakeable: fund an opposition, report every
clash as repression against the population, arm pliable
thugs and mercenaries in exile, embargo the government,
precipitate acute crisis, play up the discontent of a
hungry population, and then happily leave it to
internationalist liberals to lead the charge for military
intervention on humanitarian grounds. So with President
Aristide neutralized now, it's time to look elsewhere,
maybe west across the sea to Cuba.

Heather Williams is assistant professor
of politics at Pomona College. She can
be reached hwilliams@pomona.edu

http://www.counterpunch.org/williams03012004.html

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