Haiti
Tense diplomacy led to exit
By DAVID ADAMS, Times Latin America Correspondent
Published March 1, 2004
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - In the end he chose asylum over resistance.
After vowing that he was "ready to die" for his country, Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide lost the will to fight Sunday, abandoning his palace, and his country, for uncertain exile.
His exit came more quickly than expected. The day before his departure, he showed no signs of leaving this country of 8-million, racked by a three-week-old rebellion. He was even scheduled to appear on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
After all, he was the country's democratically recognized president, although many had questioned the legitimacy of his 2000 election. But Aristide may have miscalculated how far his countrymen - and the international community - were ready to tolerate his inability to govern the country.
Not wanting to be accused of helping to overthrow a democratically elected leader, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell pushed U.S. allies to ratchet up the pressure on Aristide.
In the midst of the increasingly urgent diplomatic activity, word came that Aristide had sent his two children to stay with relatives in New York. That made U.S. officials wonder: Was Aristide wavering?
Still, some Caribbean nations were urging intervention to prevent a rebel army in the north from staging a coup. Aristide also continued to enjoy the support of members of the U.S. Congress, particularly the Congressional Black Caucus. But other Democrats, including Florida Senators Bob Graham and Bill Nelson, began rallying to the Bush administration's side.
France and the United States refused to intervene militarily while Aristide was still in power. As late as Saturday afternoon, French and U.S diplomats were lobbying Caribbean leaders to abandon support for Aristide.
Privately, U.S. officials still were not sure how events would unfold. The rebels were threatening to advance on Port-au-Prince. The State Department worried that if the country exploded in full-scale civil war, peacekeepers might have to go in anyway.
It remains unclear how, but U.S. officials got word to the rebels to back off. There would be no rebel army marching victoriously into the capital, officials said privately.
That was when Aristide made his final mistake. On Friday the streets of the capital were taken over by armed gangs of progovernment loyalists, the dreaded chimeres, spreading panic and terror.
Starting late Thursday, word had spread that senior ruling Lavalas Party members were handing out orders to the chimeres to hunt down opposition targets. Several businesses were attacked and looted. Bodies began appearing on the streets, some killed execution style. A U.N. economist also was shot in the street by thugs, who carjacked a Red Cross vehicle sent to rescue him.
"The next thing it was going to be our homes," said Jean St. Remy, a businessman who said his wife's garment manufacturing business, which employs 400 people, was burned down Saturday night.
Outraged by what they saw as a cynically orchestrated campaign by Aristide to foment a climate of violence, U.S. embassy officials issued a toughly worded statement demanding that the chimeres get off the streets.
It accused progovernment groups of a campaign to "burn, pillage and kill." It went on: "We urgently call upon President Aristide to issue the necessary instructions so his supporters stop this violence. . . . His honor, legacy and reputation are now at stake."
Late that night Aristide appeared on state TV to appeal for calm, telling his supporters to dismantle barricades and stay home. By the next morning, all was quiet.
By silencing the chimeres with such seeming ease, Aristide delivered the proof Washington needed to persuade its allies of what many Haitians have long suspected: The chimeres took orders from Aristide.
"He was the author of his own demise," said Timothy Carney, former U.S. ambassador to Haiti between 1998 and 1999. "He was always resorting to thug politics. It was designed to put the wind up the sails of the international community, but it backfired."
In addition, the New York Times reported, the White House reacted strongly to a report of an attack Saturday on a Haitian Coast Guard installation by a pro-Aristide mob. After a firefight at the town of Killick, 5 miles from the main port, the Coast Guard workers were forced to take to boats and flee, a U.S. official told the New York Times.
That incident convinced White House officials that Aristide and his loyalists sought to shut down the process by which refugees were being intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard. In the past, Aristide used the threat of a refugee exodus to keep American critics in check, the New York Times reported.
Saturday night, Washington put out a new communique, toughening its call for Aristide to do the right thing, without directly instructing him to resign. Powell made one last attempt that evening to explain the U.S. position to Aristide's supporters in Congress. In a call to former U.S. Rep. Ron Dellums, a longtime friend of Aristide, Powell said the United States would not come to the Haitian president's rescue.
Dellums insisted that the government was reading the crisis incorrectly, and Aristide would never back down. In fact, Aristide by then was only hours away from fleeing the country.
[Last modified March 1, 2004, 01:31:03]
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