Official: Aristide Rejects Calls for Vote (Haiti)

[DuctapeFatwa]

Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has rebuffed Bush administration suggestions that he convene early presidential elections as a way to defuse the country's accelerating political crisis, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday.

While rejecting any Haitian opposition efforts to remove Aristide by force, administration officials are privately discussing ideas for a possible constitutional succession before Aristide's term expires in February 2006.

U.S. officials worry that the current crisis would only worsen if Aristide is forced to flee. One option being discussed internally is a transfer of power, with Aristide's consent, to a temporary governing board made up of Haitians who would run the country until a new president was elected.

It is not clear how much support that proposal has at top levels of the administration. Haitian government spokesman Mario Dupuy said Port-au-Prince, the capital, that his government could not accept any proposal involving a change in the election date or an early handoff of power.

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040218_1898.html

[Suspicious]

1. Unbelievable.

Last Friday, Powell made clear his impatience with Aristide and suggested that the Haitian leader is backed by disreputable elements.

"We need him to start taking action, to reach out to the opposition, to make sure that thugs are not allowed to break up peaceful demonstrations," he said.

:mad:

The hypocrisy leaves me speechless.

[Say_What]

2. COHA weighs in...

Meanwhile Haitian death squad leaders walk the streets of Queens, NY free men.

<clips>

Secretary Powell’s Non-Policy towards Haiti

Secretary of State Colin Powell’s current policy toward Haiti can be described at best as irrelevant, and at worst as a covert effort to stand by as a coup de main comes down on Haitian democracy as a result of the forcible removal of President Aristide from office. Secretary Powell’s position is that dispatching a peace force to the island at this time is premature and that the proper procedure instead would be for the Aristide government to achieve a political settlement with the opposition prior to any decision about the introduction of outside forces.

Powell’s stance is completely devoid of credibility since it condemns Haiti to precisely what the Secretary of State has previously stated that the U.S. wanted to avoid: “regime change” through an extra-constitutional change of government in Haiti whereby “the elected president . . . is forced out of office by thugs.” A peace force is needed now, when a constitutionally-elected government risks being overthrown by an opposition that increasingly is being taken over by armed war criminals from the era of military rule, and not, in the unlikely eventuality after a political settlement occurs, when presumably such forces would no longer be required.

One therefore must conclude that U.S. policy is now definitively characterized by a two tier strategy: on the one hand, Powell places Washington on the side of the rest of the hemispheric community in committing the U.S. solidly against recognizing the forcible overthrow of a democratically-elected government, as codified by OAS resolutions at Lima and Santiago. On the other hand, Washington paradoxically comes forth with a paradigm that inevitably will lead to the demise of constitutional rule in Haiti – something that his sadly inadequate Latin American team of ideologues, led by Roger Noriega and Otto Reich, have been whispering about for many weeks, namely regime change and the removal of Aristide through some unspecified process.

The Reality in Haiti

Interested overseas parties have joined Powell in stressing that outside forces would be introduced only after a political settlement had occurred between contending forces in Haiti. Powell has been joined by his French and Canadian counterparts in laying down a scenario whereby the outside community “would come forward with a police presence to implement the political agreement the sides come to.” But this formula flouts dramatic realities on the ground. To begin, the legitimate government of Haiti is being threatened by a relatively small group of armed militants against which the country’s 4,000-member untrained and under-equipped police force cannot adequately cope. Furthermore, most of the violence up to now has been at the hands of the so-called non-violent opposition, and is now being joined by increasingly violent factions. The island’s most influential of opposition faction, the Group of 184, subscribes to a “zero-option” strategy whereby it adamantly refuses to enter into a dialogue, let alone be prepared to negotiate with the Aristide government under any terms or conditions. This policy is central to the opposition’s survival because such negotiations, if successful, would lead to elections which its candidates would almost certainly lose.

http://www.coha.org/NEW_PRESS_RELEASES/New_Press_Releases_2004/04.09_Secretary_Powell%27s_Non-Policy_Towards_Haiti.htm