Haiti Government

Ami Beljeune still washes her babies each morning in a sewage canal they share with pigs, Ano Vital still has no work or money to care for his 16 children, and Lionel Lunes can't find buyers for the wood scraps he sells to survive.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide the radical came first to prominence and then to power declaring that "private property is the property of the peasants." Today, Aristide the president wants to sell Haiti's publicly owned businesses to foreigners.

Justice in Haiti isn't blind. It's dead, and the rotting corpse is threatening to undo the promise brought here by U.S. troops when they drove out the country's bloody military regime and restored democracy. That assessment, shared by nearly everyone involved in trying to put Haiti together again in the wake of the Haitian military's three years of corrupt and cruel rule, was summed up in one word by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

An investigation of a senior Cabinet official implicated in a failed plot to assassinate a leading government critic has widened after reports that the men arrested in the plot could have been involved in her subsequent death, U.S. and Haitian officials said Monday. The expanded investigation of Interior Minister Mondesir Beaubrun's role follows reports that two brothers arrested in the failed plot may have been out of jail at the time attorney Mireille Durocher was killed last week.

Justice Minister Jean-Joseph Exume said Saturday that charges by American officials that a senior Haitian Cabinet minister was linked to last week's slaying of a prominent pro-military attorney were based on the claims of "two unreliable criminals." Allegations that Interior Minister Mondesir Beaubrun was involved in a plot to kill Mireille Durocher has some U.S.

President Jean-Bertrand Aristide said Thursday that he agrees that his government has failed to provide justice or jobs in Haiti and that these shortcomings are "absolutely" a threat to stability here. "I welcome the concerns and share those comments" criticizing his government for failing to provide work or to arrest and punish criminals, he said. "I agree with them. They are right." He made his comments in an interview with two U.S.

President Clinton will arrive today to mark the end of the major U.S. military presence here and will be greeted by a still-thankful nation, but one increasingly convinced that U.S. policy is to blame for Haiti's growing lawlessness and a brutal economic crisis. Clinton will officially turn over to the United Nations responsibility for following through on policies that began Sept. 19, when 20,000 U.S.

President Clinton flies Friday to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, for the ceremonial transfer of power from American to U.N. peacekeeping troops in the strife-torn Caribbean nation. The Clinton Administration's reinstatement of Jean-Bertrand Aristide as Haitian head of state has become a bright spot in the President's foreign policy, and the visit offers an opportunity to polish the success. Clinton is to begin his daylong visit with 1,000 U.S.

Senior officials of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government stepped up their criticism of Jimmy Carter on Friday as two important U.S. military-political figures arrived to join the former President's review of the Haitian political process. "His arrogance is terrible, terrible," one Aristide aide said of Carter's call for the Haitian leader to remain neutral in parliamentary elections coming in June to allow his opponents a chance to win seats in the national legislature.

Former President Jimmy Carter, hoping to build on his success in helping secure the return of Haiti's elected president, said Wednesday that he will visit the country next week to lend his support to oft-postponed parliamentary elections. "We will explore ways in which we might be helpful in reinforcing a free and fair electoral process," Carter said in a statement issued by the Carter Center in Atlanta.