United States Foreign Relations Haiti

The United States is trying to organize a multinational peacekeeping force that would be deployed in Haiti if the military regime there falls, Secretary of State Warren Christopher said Monday. He said President Clinton has asked U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright to "sound out other countries" about their willingness to participate in such a force. She raised the issue in Ottawa on Monday with Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and Foreign Minister Andre Ouellet. A U.S.

The Clinton administration vowed to impose economic sanctions against Haiti unless it strengthens democratic procedures in advance of presidential and legislative elections set for Nov. 26. The warning was issued by Luis Lauredo, U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, at an OAS permanent council meeting on OAS efforts to help build democracy in Haiti.

The CIA once tried to intervene in Haiti's elections with a covert-action program that would have undercut the political strength of its current president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, according to congressional sources with firsthand knowledge of the incident. But the CIA's effort was stymied when the Senate Intelligence Committee ordered the CIA to halt the program, under which the agency tried to channel money for the use of some of the candidates in the 1987-88 Haitian elections.

The Clinton administration will warn Haiti's government next week that it risks losing tens of millions of dollars in U.S. aid unless it voids the results of widely condemned elections, a State Department official said Friday. The balloting in May and July gave the party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide sweeping victories in both houses of Haiti's reconstituted Parliament. But U.S.

The first serious rift between the United States and President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has developed over the composition of this nation's police and security forces, according to Haitian and diplomatic sources. The split opened almost immediately upon Aristide's return from exile in October with plans to abolish the 7,000-member army that had forced him from office three years earlier. U.S.

The country's military-backed government announced the appointment of four new ministers hours after President Clinton unveiled sweeping sanctions in hopes of hastening the restoration of democracy to the troubled Caribbean nation. The Cabinet shuffle, made public late Friday on government radio, was immediately denounced by political observers in Haiti as "cosmetic." Clinton's tough new economic sanctions will affect members of Haiti's Cabinet, army high command and dozens of lesser officials.

On what could be the eve of a U.S.-led invasion of their tormented homeland, the parishioners of Notre Dame d'Haiti Roman Catholic Church will don their Sunday best today and pray for a quick end to any bloodshed. The cause may be a just one, they allow, but the fact remains that once again lives may be lost in the Caribbean. "As in all wars, some innocents will pay for it," said Jean Destine, a social worker who took his 11-year-old son to a peace vigil that broke up after sunrise Saturday.

The isolation of this Caribbean nation from the outside world, at least by air, was complete Saturday as the last scheduled flight left Haiti. The Air France jet that took off in the early afternoon for the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe was the airline's last, bringing it into line with other carriers who stopped flying to Haiti late last month after President Clinton tightened sanctions against Haiti's military leaders.

Bowing to Russia's desperate need for export earnings, the Clinton Administration is moving toward a decision to let Moscow sell a famous Russian product in the United States: handguns. As a result, the Makarov semiautomatic pistol, favorite side arm of KGB spies and Cold War bad guys, may soon come to a gun store near you. A U.S.

After she returned to her home to find that the Haitian army had fatally shot her 18- and 20-year-old sons, Irani Bacien said she knew that she had to escape the horror that Haiti has become. Spying a 25-foot boat sailing from the island, Bacien, 42, chased along the shore shouting, "Help me! Help me! Take me with you!" She left behind five children, ages 5 through 16, and daily fears for their safety. But for now, at least, the safety of Bacien and almost 5,000 Haitians now in U.S.

For two days last month, they hunted the frail old man. Seat by seat, the police searched every commercial jet leaving Port-au-Prince's airport for the United States. They tore through cars crossing the remote Dominican border and pored over surveillance tapes from cameras outside diplomatic compounds here. They wanted Leon Manus at all costs--and, by his and most others' reckoning, they wanted him dead.

The American scientists were awe-struck when they finally penetrated the sheer cliffs and swept away the scorpions of Navassa Island, one of a handful of remote and anachronistic outposts claimed by the United States. What they found in July were riches far beyond Navassa's million tons of bird dung--a resource once so valued that it accounted for a rebellion by African American workers, complete with ax murders, leading to a landmark Supreme Court decision on U.S. sovereignty there.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in a rushed trip to Haiti, lectured the country's president and politicians Friday to reach a compromise and break the political impasse that has paralyzed the government and economy of this troubled Caribbean nation. Repeating the message she delivered to President Rene Preval and members of the Haitian congress, she told reporters: "Disputes are the lifeblood of democracy. But Haiti has gone too long with its stalemate."

Relations between the United States and Haiti haven't been quite the same since Pastor Antoine Leroy and Jacques Florival were gunned down outside Florival's home in a suburb of Port-au-Prince under mysterious circumstances in August. Third World killings rarely have an impact on American politics and policy, but this was no ordinary murder case. Leroy and Florival were right-wing political opponents of Haitian President Rene Preval, a key client of the Clinton administration.

When Dany Toussaint arrived at Miami International Airport on an American Airlines flight from Haiti on Jan. 22, alarm bells secretly went off all over the U.S. government. Toussaint, a confidant of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, had once been the Clinton administration's stalwart ally in its efforts to bring democracy and stability to Haiti.

U.S. moves to prop up Haiti's fragile democracy may actually undermine President Rene Garcia Preval and international efforts to help this impoverished nation, diplomats here warn. The arrival earlier this month of 40 heavily armed U.S. diplomatic security agents to protect Preval was the latest incident in what some allies view as a series of shortsighted measures to ensure that Haiti will not become an embarrassment in the six weeks before the U.S. presidential election.

The American scientists were awe-struck when they finally penetrated the sheer cliffs and swept away the scorpions of Navassa Island, one of a handful of remote and anachronistic outposts claimed by the United States. What they found in July were riches far beyond Navassa's million tons of bird dung--a resource once so valued that it accounted for a rebellion by African American workers, complete with ax murders, leading to a landmark Supreme Court decision on U.S. sovereignty there.

Senior U.S. officials have initiated large-scale business negotiations with some of the most powerful and wealthy Haitian supporters of the military overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, according to Haitian business and political sources. The secret talks came this week at the same time the United States was dismantling the Haitian army and supposedly engineering a new political environment to undermine the power of the same anti-democratic elite. In one case, the sources said, Lt.

New Haitian President Rene Garcia Preval, visiting Washington on Thursday for his first official meeting with President Clinton, acknowledged a spate of police and political violence in his impoverished Caribbean country but blamed the problems on matters beyond his control. Although he came to Washington for economic aid, Preval was dogged by questions about violence in his nation.

A secret deal engineered by President Clinton will send Canadian soldiers to maintain stability in Haiti after U.S. troops withdraw from the nation next month, according to published reports. The arrangement, worked out in the past week by aides to the president and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, would commit the U.S. to provide logistic support troops for the Canadians and to dispatch U.S. reinforcements in an emergency, Newsday reported.