Mobutu meets with President George Bush at the White House

By most accounts, the United States was involved in both the death of Lumumba and the coup of 1965, which brought Mobutu to power, although the extent of this involvement is not certain. In any case, because of his longstanding relations with the American intelligence community, Mobutu was very aware of United States backing both as a resource and as a handicap.

Zaire generally received firm American support in the late 1960s and found American influence helpful in various economic and political disputes. The promulgation of a generous investment code in 1969 and a moderate political stance lured extensive foreign, including American, investment, and a substantial program of United States aid was continued. Mobutu returned from a visit to the United States in 1970 with pledges of substantial new investment. Relations continued to be warm until the Zairianization decree of November 30, 1973, which led to the transfer of a large number of foreign-owned enterprises, including facilities owned by international oil companies, into Zairian hands. Thereafter, relations were chilly.

But in 1975, the United States and Zaire found themselves supporting the same faction in the Angolan civil war (see Regional Relations , this ch.). The United States, apparently deciding that it needed a stable Zaire for political and economic reasons and sensing the potential for Zaire to support United States strategic interests in sub-Saharan Africa, promoted the relationship with Zaire. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's first official trip to Africa in April 1976 included a long visit to Kinshasa.

The Carter administration, which had declared its number-one foreign policy objective to be the promotion of human rights, posed a problem for the Mobutu regime, with its poor human rights record. For the first time, criticism of Mobutu by members of Congress and by voluntary agencies was met with some sympathy by the United States president. However, the skeptical attitude toward the Zairian government was partially reversed by Shaba I and Shaba II. On the occasion of the second invasion in 1978, President Jimmy Carter supported Mobutu's accusations of Cuban and Soviet involvement, even though no hard evidence was presented. But the United States refused to become involved militarily and sent only nonlethal military supplies, such as medical and transportation equipment. In 1980 the House of Representatives (concerned over human rights violations and the misuse of United States aid) voted to end all military assistance to Zaire; but the Senate reinstated the funds, reacting to pressure from Carter and American business interests in Zaire.

The election of the more conservative Ronald Reagan as United States president was well received in Zaire, and in fact United States concerns about Mobutu's human rights record became muted. Moreover, Mobutu again was seen as providing useful services to the United States in its struggle against the Soviet Union and Soviet allies such as Libya and Angola. The domestic context in the United States had changed, however, in that an increasing number of American groups had become opposed to administration policy toward Zaire.

As United States-Zaire relations became more visible in Washington, Mobutu countered by becoming more active in promoting a positive image of himself and his country. Two Washington lobbying firms with ties to the Reagan administration received hefty contracts from Mobutu.

Nevertheless, in November 1990, Congress cut military and economic aid (except for some humanitarian aid) to Zaire, crystallizing the longstanding division between Congress and the executive branch and between liberals and conservatives on Zaire policy. As it adjourned, Congress denied the Bush administration's request for US$4 million in military aid and stipulated that US$40 million in economic aid be funneled through humanitarian agencies not affiliated with the Zairian government. Its decision was based on human rights violations--the September 1990 Lubumbashi massacre in particular--and accusations that Mobutu's vast wealth was largely stolen from the Zairian people.

By 1992 the United States-Zaire relationship had reached a turning point. The end of the Cold War had diminished the strategic significance of Zaire to the United States, and events in Zaire since 1990 had made it clear that Mobutu's days in power were numbered. In 1991-92, the United States, together with Belgium and France, attempted to promote peaceful political change in Zaire, by pressuring Mobutu to oversee the transition to democratic government and to depart voluntarily. The Zairian opposition, however, still perceived this approach as a continued "propping up" of the Mobutu regime and called for an unequivocal United States rejection of Mobutu, which was not forthcoming.

In October 1992, the United States joined Belgium and France in extending official support to the Tshisekedi government. The United States also reiterated its support for the national conference and its hope that the conference would lead ultimately to fair and free elections.

Since that time, the United States has continued to support the legitimacy of the Tshisekedi government and to insist that the Mobutu government live up to its promise to turn over real power to that government. It has consistently denounced Mobutu's obstruction of the transition process and has refused to recognize the rival Birindwa government. Moreover, the Clinton administration has taken several concrete steps to show its displeasure with the Mobutu regime. The United States has not replaced its ambassador to Zaire, who was reassigned in March 1993. The United States also refused to allow Zaire's central bank governor into the United States to attend a World Bank-IMF meeting and has made it clear that Mobutu is not welcome in the United States. Nevertheless, the United States has stopped short of taking or even advocating harsher measures against the regime, such as the imposition of economic sanctions or the confiscation of Mobutu's assets abroad. As such, in the view of some observers the United States has put only very limited pressure on Mobutu to step down. Many see this policy as an indication that the United States still regards Mobutu as a stabilizing factor, a viewpoint that would explain United States acceptance of Mobutu as part of the transition process in Zaire. The United States-brokered political accord that accompanied the Transitional Act permitted President Mobutu to remain as titular head of state and thus a legitimate institution of government, albeit with limited powers. One unintended effect of this arrangement has been to confer some legitimacy on Mobutu and thus allow him to obstruct the transition process and the functioning of the legitimate government under Tshisekedi.

Throughout 1993 the United States has continued to urge the various political forces in Zaire to continue negotiating, apparently believing that ongoing negotiations will eventually lead to a power-sharing compromise. It appears increasingly likely that the United States would accept a so-called "neutral administration" replacing both the Mobutu-appointed government and the Tshisekedi government.

Source: US Congress Library

Haitian Plans a Vatican Visit To Win Support for Aristide

A day after he announced that he would stay on past his scheduled Dec. 15 resignation, the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Prime Minister announced that he would go to the Vatican to seek support for a new effort to press Haiti's military leaders to give up power.

Robert Malval said today, "We are about to launch a new initiative and we want the Church to take part and support what we are about to do."

Only the Vatican has recognized the military authorities who overthrew Father Aristide, Haiti's first elected President, in September 1991. Juan Carlos Brandt, a spokesman for the United Nations, said that the backing of the Vatican would carry more weight with the Haitian people, who are predominantly Catholic, than anything else.

Mr. Malval said his plan called for a meeting of Haitians -- political party leaders, businessman, various members of the private sector and hopefully the military -- to meet in Haiti sometime before Christmas to discuss how to implement the United Nations-brokered agreement that would restore Father Aristide to power.

Mr. Malval said that with the country in the grip of a United Nations trade embargo, the situation in Haiti is so desperate that even Father Aristide's opponents now want him to return.

Mr. Malval had vowed to resign on Dec. 15, but agreed to stay on in an acting capacity after appeals by the Clinton Administration and United Nations officials. The Administration regards Mr. Malval as having the best chance to bridge differences between the military and Father Aristide.

Mr. Malval said the meeting in Haiti would focus on how to carry out the agreement, which was signed in New York in July by Father Aristide and Lieut. Gen. Raoul Cedras, the head of the Haitian Army. The agreement called for General Cedras to step down and Father Aristide to return to Haiti by Oct. 30. When General Cedras refused to step down the United Nations reimposed a fuel and arms embargo.

After meeting with members of the Senate and State Department in Washington on Monday and with the United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali today, Mr. Malval said that he had their full support to move forward with his plan.

Next week, on Dec. 13 and 14, there will a meeting on Haiti in Paris between American, Canadian, Venezuelan and French officials. Mr. Malval said he would go to Paris before the conference begins to discuss his plan with the group.

Source: New York Times

Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Ivory Coast's Leader Since Freedom in 1960, Is Dead

President Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast, Africa's oldest and longest-serving head of state and one of the last of a generation of African leaders to guide his people from colonalism, died yesterday. He was officially said to be 88 years old, but was widely believed to be much older.

His death was announced by Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara in a televised address 33 years to the day after the West African country gained its independence from France. Mr. Ouattara said the President had died at 6:35 A.M. Mr. Houphouet-Boigny recently underwent surgery for cancer of the prostate, but the cause of death was not immediately known.

The Speaker of Parliament, Henri Konan-Bedie, said that he had taken over, Reuters news service reported. The official television introduced Mr. Konan-Bedie as the new head of state as provided in the constitution. "The constitution confers on me in this tragic moment responsibilities of whose weight I am aware, the responsibilities of a head of state," Mr. Konan-Bedie, 59, said in a brief televised address. "I am assuming them from now."

Since becoming President of the Ivory Coast in 1960, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny (pronounced oof-WET bwahn-YEE) had presided over a tenfold increase in per capita income, to about $900 today, in what had been one of France's less developed African colonies. Of African countries south of the Sahara that do not export oil, the Ivory Coast has a per capita income second only to South Africa's. Agriculture Was Priority

A central element in the Ivory Coast's prosperity was Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's singular decision to give industrial development a low priority, believing it wiser to develop the nation's agricultural resources first, and only later concentrating on providing efficient ports, good roads, power and communications.

He also encouraged foreign investment with laws that imposed few restrictions on the transfer of profits and capital -- a policy that was scorned by his more nationalistic neighbors. The first 20 years or so after independence bore out his strategy well.

Coffee production increased significantly, catapulting the Ivory Coast into third place behind Brazil and Colombia in total production. By the early 1980's it became the world's leading cocoa producer. It also became Africa's leading exporter of pineapples and palm oil.

The Ivory Coast's rapid economic progress was often cited as a showcase for successful capitalist development in an African setting. And through a confluence of political acumen, eloquence and a calm and authoritative manner, this short, small-boned, almost delicate-appearing man, was able to avoid most of the fierce confrontation and political turmoil that have tormented post-independence Africa. Even his harshest critics, who called him a tool of neocolonialism, concede that he instilled a strong sense of nationhood among the country's nearly 60 distinct ethnic groups.

The stability that he built during his first two decades in office seriously began to erode in recent years. Much of the deterioration was caused by a dramatic slump in world commodity prices, which threw the economy into a tailspin. In recent months, for the first time in memory, some civil servants were not paid; and there was talk of huge future layouts.

Moreover, scores of Ghanaians were killed in the Ivory Coast last month after a soccer match in Ghana that Ghana won. That made many foreigners fearful for their safety.

In the wake of mounting street protests during the spring of 1990, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny reluctantly lifted the ban on opposition parties, opening the way for multiparty government. At the time, his principal political opponent, Laurent Gbagbo, a history professor, made an issue of the President's age, obliquely suggesting that he was not sufficiently fit for a seventh five-year term.

The President did little to deflect such criticism. In the waning days of the campaign, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny was virtually invisible, relying mostly on old television footage of himself in his younger days to sway the electorate. The tactic appeared to work: he swept to victory in presidential polls in October that year. A Wealthy Planter's Son

Felix Houphouet-Boigny was born Oct. 18, 1905 -- or up to seven years earlier, according to some unofficial accounts -- in Yamoussoukro, a town 160 miles north of Abidjan, then the Ivory Coast capital. The son of a wealthy chief who owned large cocoa and coffee plantations, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny made his way through the French colonial education system to become a prosperous rural doctor and successful planter.

He turned to politics in the mid-1940's, a tense period in which nationalists in France's eight West African colonies were clamoring for change and self-determination. In 1944 he was a co-founder, with other disgruntled African planters, of the African Agricultural Syndicate, a group organized to protect its members' interests against inroads made by French settlers. He soon rose to prominence and within a year -- after converting the organization into the Democratic Party of the Ivory Coast -- he was elected a deputy to the French National Assembly.

He immediately gained a reputation by securing abolition of the single most unpopular feature of colonial rule, a labor law that allowed French planters to conscript workers from any village in the country. That same year Mr. Houphouet-Boigny allied his party with a new regional movement called the African Democratic Rally. The movement, of which he was president, generally voted with the Communists in the French Assembly, because they had shown sympathy for African aspirations. 'A Bourgeois Landowner'

But after the Communists went into powerless opposition in the late 1940's, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny broke off the rally's ties with them. Explaining his reasons for having worked with the Communists, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny remarked: "I, a bourgeois landowner, I would preach the class struggle? That is why we aligned ourselves with the Communist Party, without joining it."

By this time, however, he had become much feared by the French as a dangerous African nationalist, and in 1950, after an outbreak of anti-colonial violence in his territory, he was ordered arrested. He managed to slip away minutes before the police arrived at his home and was never imprisoned, although many of his political allies were.

But once independence for the Ivory Coast was in sight, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny sought to continue close cooperation with Paris. He divided his time between Abidjan, of which he was mayor, and Paris, where he served in the National Assembly. By 1956 his relations with the French Government were cordial enough for Prime Minister Guy Mallet to appoint him a minister-delegate, the first African in a French Cabinet.

By that time Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's popularity and influence in the African territories, where anti-colonial sentiment was growing, had become formidable. One French magazine noted in 1956 that he "was the object of impassioned manifestations." His photograph, the magazine said, "was in all the huts, on the lapels of coats, on the corsages of African women and even on the handlebars of bicycles."

Returning to his homeland to head an independent Ivory Coast in 1960, he established uncontested personal control through a unique brand of paternalistic authoritarianism. As in many African countries, he sought to keep all dissent under the umbrella of a single party.

And he often subdued his opposition by largesse, giving his opponents patronage jobs instead of jail sentences. Several half-hearted coup attempts in the early 1960's were easily suppressed. All those arrested were eventually released. Later, he even made one of the plotters a minister. And until recently, the press, radio and television were tightly controlled.

He was so confident of his popularity and grip on the reins of power that virtually every year he took extended European vacations -- occasionally as long as six months.

Europeans, who became unwelcome in much of Africa after independence, were still eagerly welcomed in the Ivory Coast. In particular, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny continued close economic and cultural ties with France: the French population in the Ivory Coast grew from about 10,000 in 1960 to about 50,000 30 years later. And because of the important role he gave to French technical experts in Government, banking and business, some of Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's critics accused him, often from abroad, of being a neocolonialist. Overtures to South Africa

In international relations, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny, often went against the grain in Africa. In the late 1960's he supported the ultimately unsuccessful Biafran war of secession from Nigeria. He also sought, on occasion, a dialogue with South Africa. In 1973, however, he joined other African nations in breaking off relations with Israel, and the ties were not restored until 1985.

Mr. Houphouet-Boigny was subjected to worldwide criticism in 1979, when he granted asylum to Jean-Bedel Bokassa, the exiled leader of the Central African Republic. However, he subsequently found the presence of Mr. Bokassa, who had been accused of the massacre of hundreds of his countrymen, a continuing burden, both politically and financially, and in 1983 he ordered his expulsion.

The same year he realized a dream when Yamoussoukro, his birthplace and the seat of the traditional chieftaincy of the Baoule ethnic group was designated the Ivory Coast's new capital by the ruling party as "an expression of gratitude from the country to the father of a nation."

But soon afterward, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's popularity began to wane. His oft-repeated assertion that "not a single drop of blood has been spilled in this country since I've been President," was conclusively disproved in the late 1980's. Civil unrest increased after the sharp turn in the country's economic fortunes. Unemployment has become acute, especially in urban areas like Abidjan and violent crime has become increasingly common. Huge Cathedral in Birthplace

Mr. Houphouet-Boigny was also widely criticized at home and abroad for his decision to build a $200 million Roman Catholic basilica, Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro, by some measures the world's largest Christian church. The air-conditioned edifice can accommodate 18,000 people inside and 300,000 more in a 7.4-acre esplanade outside. Yet, only about 15 per cent of the population is thought to be Catholic, with about another 20 per cent Muslim and the rest animist. The President insisted that the basilica was built on his own land and financed with his own money.

Until he was well into his late 80's, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny continued to make day-to-day decisions and visitors who met him said he was as lucid and relatively robust. But as his health began to fail, there were increasing complaints that he lacked the energy to carry the nation into a new era of growth. At the time of his death, he was the third-longest-serving leader in the world, after President Kim Il Sung, the North Korean leader, and Fidel Castro of Cuba.

Mr. Houphouet-Boigny had four children by his first wife and a daughter by his second wife, Therese.

Source: New York Times

C.I.A. Formed Haitian Unit Later Tied to Narcotics Trade

The Central Intelligence Agency created an intelligence service in Haiti in the mid-1980's to fight the cocaine trade, but the unit evolved into an instrument of political terror whose officers at times engaged in drug trafficking, American and Haitian officials say. American officials say the C.I.A. cut its ties to the Haitian organization shortly after the 1991 military coup against Haiti's first democratically elected President, the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Three former chiefs of the Haitian unit, the National Intelligence Service, known as S.I.N. from its initials in French, are now on the United States Treasury Department's list of Haitian officials whose assets in the United States were frozen this month because of their support for the military leaders blocking Father Aristide's return to power. Analyses Are Criticized

The disclosure of the American role in creating the agency in 1986 comes amid increasing Congressional and public debate about the intelligence relationship between the United States and Haiti, the richest and poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.

Supporters of Father Aristide contend that the C.I.A. is undermining the chances for his return with analyses skewed by a misplaced trust in his military foes.

The agency paid key members of the junta now in power for political and military information up until the ouster of Father Aristide in 1991. A review of the C.I.A.'s activities in Haiti under the Reagan and Bush Administrations, based on documents and interviews with current and former officials, confirms that senior C.I.A. officers have long been deeply skeptical about the stability and politics of President Aristide, a leftist priest. C.I.A. Help for Aristide

No evidence suggests that the C.I.A backed the coup or intentionally undermined President Aristide. In fact, the agency has acted to help him at times, for example through a program that is now training bodyguards to protect him should he return to Haiti from his exile in the United States.

Though much of the C.I.A.'s activity in Haiti remains secret, the emerging record reveals both failures and achievements in recent years.

Having created the Haitian intelligence service, the agency failed to insure that several million dollars spent training and equipping the service from 1986 to 1991 was actually used in the war on drugs. The unit produced little narcotics intelligence. Senior members committed acts of political terror against Aristide supporters, including interrogations that included torture, and threatened last year to kill the local chief of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.

On the other hand, United States officials said, one senior Haitian intelligence officer dissuaded soldiers from killing President Aristide during the 1991 coup. The C.I.A. also helped to save the lives of at least six Aristide supporters after the coup, evacuating them in a late-night rescue that involved the Navy's elite SEAL unit, officials said.

The C.I.A. also had a mixed track record in analyzing the fall of the 30-year Duvalier family dictatorship in 1986. The agency's analysts did not foresee the political violence that led to the collapse of elections in 1987 and the 1991 coup. But the analysts, contradicting the White House and the State Department, correctly predicted this year that the Haitian military would block President Aristide's scheduled return in October.

Members of the Congressional panels that oversee the C.I.A. say the agency's intelligence-gathering helped American policy makers bewildered by the political chaos that followed the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship, including a series of military coups, and by Father Aristide's overwhelming victory in the December 1990 election. Lawmaker Cites C.I.A.'s 'Bum Rap'

"The problems of Haiti are problems of policy, not intelligence," said Representative Dan Glickman, a Kansas Democrat who heads the House intelligence committee. "In some cases, intelligence gets a bum rap. From the interviews we've had with the agency, I don't get any feeling that our goal was to preserve military dictatorship in Haiti."

But Senator Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who received extensive briefings from the agency, asserted last week that the C.I.A.'s view of Haiti was distorted by its ties to the Haitian military. "A lot of the information we're getting is from the very same people who in front of the world are brutally murdering people," Senator Dodd said.

One crucial source of information for American intelligence over the years, according to two Government officials, was Lieut. Gen. Raoul Cedras, who leads the Haitian armed forces. The officials said he provided the United States Government with reports critical of Father Aristide. The officials did not provide details from those reports. Nor did they say whether the general was paid.

In 1957, Francois Duvalier rose to power in Haiti. A corrupt dictator, he consolidated his power with the aid of a 10,000-member gang known as the Tontons Macoute.

Four years later, he was threatened by a C.I.A. covert operation in which the agency supplied arms to opponents plotting a coup, according to a 1975 Senate report. The plot failed.

On his death in 1971, Mr. Duvalier bequeathed his regime to his son, Jean-Claude, who received nearly $400 million in American economic aid until a popular revolt toppled his Government and he fled the country in February 1986.

Shortly afterward the C.I.A. created the Haitian intelligence service, S.I.N. The agency was staffed solely with officers of the Haitian Army, which was already widely perceived as an unprofessional force with a tendency toward corruption. The stated purpose was to stem the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of cocaine through Haiti, a crucial transit point for drug traffickers. Money for Agency Despite Aid Curb

The United States would gain information on the Haitian military by creating the unit; the Haitian military would obtain money, training and equipment from the C.I.A.

In intelligence parlance, it was a "liaison" relationship. The C.I.A. does not normally report to Congress on such relationships, citing the sensitivity of other nations to disclosures of secrets. That reduces the role of Congressional oversight.

S.I.N. received $500,000 to $1 million a year in equipment, training and financial support from the C.I.A., United States and Haitian Government officials say. The money may have sent a mixed message, for Congress was withholding about $1.5 million in aid for the Haitian military regime at the same time.

By late 1988, the agency decided to "distance itself" from the intelligence service, a senior United States official said. But the ties continued until October 1991, just after the Sept. 30 coup against Father Aristide, he said.

A 1992 Drug Enforcement Administration document described S.I.N. in the present tense, as "a covert counternarcotics intelligence unit which often works in unison with the C.I.A. at post."

The Haitian intelligence service provided little information on drug trafficking and some of its members themselves became enmeshed in the drug trade, American officials said. A United States official who worked at the American Embassy in Haiti in 1991 and 1992 said he took a dim view of S.I.N.

"It was a military organization that distributed drugs in Haiti," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It never produced drug intelligence. The agency gave them money under counternarcotics and they used their training to do other things in the political arena." U.S. Drug Official Gets Death Threat

"The money that was spent to train these guys in the counter-narcotics field boggled the mind -- half a million to a million a year," the official said. "They were turning it around and using it for political reasons, against whatever group they wanted to gather information on."

In September 1992, the work of United States drug-enforcement officials in Haiti led to the arrest of a S.I.N. officer on cocaine charges by the Haitian authorities.

A few days later, the Drug Enforcement Administration's chief in Haiti, Tony Greco, received a death threat on his private telephone line in the American Embassy. The caller identified himself as the arrested intelligence officer's superior, United States Government records show. Mr. Greco immediately left Haiti and has not returned.

Three former chiefs of the Haitian intelligence service -- Col. Ernst Prudhomme, Col. Diderot Sylvain and Col. Leopold Clerjeune -- were named by the United States Treasury Department in a Nov. 1 order for seizure of their assets in the United States. The document named 41 people "who seized power illegally," helped anti-Aristide forces or "contributed to the violence in Haiti."

Haitian officials say those S.I.N. officers persecuted Father Aristide's supporters and used their C.I.A. training to spy on them.

"They were heavily involved in spying on so-called subversive groups," an exiled member of the Aristide Government said. "They were doing nothing but political repression. Father Aristide was one of their targets. They targeted people who were for change."

Between 1 A.M. and 3 A.M. on Nov. 2, 1989, Colonel Prudhomme, who headed S.I.N. and held the title of chief of national security, led a brutal interrogation of Evans Paul, the Mayor of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, according to a sworn deposition taken from Mr. Paul in connection with a Federal lawsuit filed against senior Haitian military officers in 1991 in Miami.

Colonel Clerjeune also was present at the interrogation, which left Mr. Paul with five broken ribs and internal injuries, the Mayor said.

Mr. Paul, who opposed the military regime, was arrested by soldiers, beaten and taken to the police headquarters in Port-au-Prince, where the beatings continued, according to sworn statements. When Mr. Paul lost consciousness, he said, he was revived by soldiers holding a flame from a cigarette lighter under his nose.

"Prudhomme himself never touched me," Mr. Paul said in an interview from Haiti. "He played the role of the intellectual, the man who searched carefully for contradictions in your account -- the man who seemed to give direction to the whole enterprise. He wanted to present me to the world as a terrorist."

"He seemed to have so much information about my life, all the way from my childhood," the Mayor said. "It was if he had been following me step by step."

Last summer, Mr. Paul met his interrogator again. Colonel Prudhomme was part of the military delegation led by General Cedras at talks mediated by the United Nations in July at Governors Island in New York. The accord reached at that meeting called for General Cedras to step down by Oct. 15 and allow Mr. Aristide to return on Oct. 30. The military reneged on the accord.

But S.I.N. also produced a success story: Col. Alix P. Silva, who led the Haitian intelligence service from 1986 to 1988. In 1988, Colonel Silva compiled a list of 18 senior Haitian military officials whom he said should be cashiered for unprofessional conduct, corruption or cocaine trafficking. At the head of the list was Lieut. Gen. Prosper Avril, who seized power in a 1989 coup.

Forced into hiding when General Avril took power, Colonel Silva resurfaced after the 1990 election, in which Father Aristide won 67.5 percent of the vote in a field of 10 candidates. The colonel then served as Deputy Commander in Chief of the army under General Cedras, who betrayed President Aristide by ousting him in September 1991.

It was Colonel Silva, current and former American officials say, who persuaded Haitian soldiers not to shoot Father Aristide on the night of the coup. Although briefly a member of the Cedras junta, Colonel Silva was among a handful of Aristide supporters who were evacuated shortly after the coup in a clandestine flight from Haiti that was coordinated by the C.I.A. and a team of Navy commandos, the officials said.

Though derring-do may be part of the C.I.A.'s image, the agency's most important task is helping American leaders understand what goes on in the world. Its intelligence analysts, not its spies, hold sway in Washington.

The agency's leading analyst of Latin American affairs, Brian Latell, traveled to Port-au-Prince in July 1992 and recorded his trip in a three-page note that he later shared with members of Congressional intelligence committees. He met with General Cedras, who he said impressed him as "a conscientious military leader who genuinely wishes to minimize his role in politics."

That impression, Father Aristide's supporters say, contributed to the faith placed in General Cedras by United States policy makers, a faith broken when the general abrogated the Governor's Island accord.

Mr. Latell also reported that he "saw no evidence of oppressive rule" in Haiti. Rights Report Tells A Different Story

"I do not wish to minimize the role the military plays in intimidating, and occasionally terrorizing real and suspected opponents," the analyst said, but "there is no systematic or frequent lethal violence aimed at civilians."

That conflicts with a State Department report for the same year, which said, "Haitians suffered frequent human rights abuses throughout 1992, including extra-judicial killings by security forces, disappearances, beatings and other mistreatment of detainees and prisoners, arbitrary arrests and detention and executive interference with the judicial process."

Mr. Glickman, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, defended Mr. Latell's work and said that no institutional bias afflicted the agency's reporting on Haiti.

But he said he had questions about "this whole counternarcotics involvement of the agency" and what good, if any, it achieved in Haiti.

Source: New York Times

Haitian Radio Host, Backer of Aristide, Is Killed in Miami

A popular Haitian radio broadcaster and local community leader who supported the ousted Haitian President, the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was killed on Sunday night in the parking lot of a school here.

The victim, Dona St. Plite, was leaving a fund-raising event he had headed to benefit the children of Fritz Dor, a Haitian-born radio personality who was also killed in Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood, in 1991. In all, three Haitian radio show hosts have been killed since 1991, and all of them have been Aristide supporters.

No suspects had been arrested in the St. Plite case.

"It is too early to tell what the motive is," said David Magnuson, a Miami police spokesman. "We are talking to a number of people who were in the parking lot of the Edison Middle School, where the shooting took place."

But some Haitians here said Mr. St. Plite's name appeared on a hit list of Aristide supporters that had circulated in Miami over the weekend. "It is obviously a political murder," said Rolande Dorancy, who heads the Haitian Refugee Center here.

Ms. Dorancy's name was on at least one version of the hit list, which also named Father Aristide, his Cabinet and exiled pro-Aristide journalists. The hand-written document says, "This is a list of people in Haiti, Miami and Canada who must be executed before the 30th of October." That is the date agreed to by the Haitian military leaders for Father Aristide's reinstatement.

Mr. St. Plite was host of a popular radio show on WKAT-AM that featured guests, call-ins and French and Creole music. Arnie Premer, the manager of the station, said Mr. St. Plite also owned a driving school and was planning to open a used car dealership.

The third radio personality who was killed, Jean Claude Olivier, was shot in 1991. According to Assistant State Attorney John Kastrenakas, both of the men convicted in the two 1991 cases were hired killers.

Source: New York Times

WHAT'S BEHIND WASHINGTON'S SILENCE ON HAITI DRUG CONNECTION?

At stake in the U.S. confrontation with the Haitian military regime is a cocaine smuggling operation that earns millions of dollars for Haitian military officials while dumping tons of the deadly white powder on American streets. Yet while the country debates the merits of armed intervention in Haiti, the Clinton administration has remained mum on the Haitian "drug connection."

A confidential report by the Drug Enforcement Agency obtained by Pacific News Service describes Haiti as "a major transshipment point for cocaine traffickers" funnelling drugs from Colombia and the Dominican Republic into the U.S.-with the knowledge and active involvement of high military officials and business elites.

The corruption of the Haitian military "is substantial enough to hamper any significant drug investigation attempting to dismantle" illicit drug operations inside Haiti, the report states. Echoing the report's findings, exiled Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide recently blamed the military's role in the drug trade for his ouster.

Despite extensive DEA intelligence documenting Haiti's drug role, neither the Clinton administration, nor the Bush administration before it, have ever raised that role publicly. Now critics of U.S. policy on Haiti, including one Congressman, are questioning that silence, suggesting it reflects de facto U.S. support for the Haitian military and a reluctance to offer unqualified support for Aristide.

"I've been amazed that our government has never talked about the drug trafficking...even though it is obviously one of the major reasons why these people drove their president out of the country and why they are determined not to let him back in. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal profits that are having disastrous consequences for the American people," says Rep. John Conyers (D-MI).

Larry Burns, head of the Washington, D.C.-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, claims, "From the moment Aristide was overthrown two years ago, Washington has equivocated on whether it wanted him back or not..." To secure the military "as an anchor to Aristide's sail," Burns charges, Washington "turned a blind eye to the corruption charges, and pretended that it could be reformed through professionalization and U.S. training."

A senior administration official at the National Security Council dismisses the charge but when asked why the administration has failed to publicize DEA allegations of drug trafficking, the spokesman had no comment.

The DEA first established a Country Office (CO) in Port-au-Prince to assist the Haitian government with its anti-narcotics activities in November 1987. Throughout Aristide's brief tenure in office, DEA agents worked closely with Haitian military narcotics services, investigating an illegal cocaine network estimated to be moving some $300-$500 million worth of cocaine into the U.S. per year. Although the DEA office was shut down after the 1991 coup, it reopened in the fall of 1992. But soon after DEA intelligence prompted the arrest of a member of Haiti's ClA-linked National Intelligence, DEA local agent Tony Greco received death threats from a man identifying himself as the National Intelligence member's boss.

A Congressional source familiar with the DEA's history in Haiti told PNS that Greco had also "connected (Lt. Colonel Michel) Francois to the drug trafficking operations in Haiti." Francois, the current chief of police, is alleged to be behind the current campaign of terror.

What disturbs Rep. Conyers is that none of this information ever reached the public. "By turning a deaf ear to what is obviously a prime force behind Aristide's ouster, we raise questions about our own involvement in drug activities," Conyers says. He is currently investigating how it is that the ships and aircraft necessary to sustain such a large operation evade detection and interdiction, while the U.S. government has managed to spot, stop and turn back almost every ramshackle boat carrying refugees.

Indeed the DEA report shows that after the 1991 coup sent Aristide into exile, there were virtually no major seizures of cocaine from Haiti as compared to nearly 4,000 pounds seized in 1990.

Michael Levine, author of "Deep Cover" and a decorated DEA agent with 25 years of experience fighting drugs overseas, says what's going on in Haiti is "just another example of elements of the U.S. government protecting killers, drug dealers and dictators for the sake of some political end that's going to cost a whole bunch of kids in this country their lives.

"I saw the drug traffickers take over the government of Bolivia in 1980, ironically with the assistance of the CIA, and we (the DEA) just packed up our office and went home."

Source: Global research.ca

Attack on Cape Town Church Keeps a Rattled Nation Edgy

Twelve worshipers were killed and more than 50 were wounded by gunmen during an attack on Sunday night at St. James Church near Cape Town.

Absurdly, the first notion that came to Kara-Anne Harris on Sunday night as the killers kicked in the door of St. James Church and blasted worshipers with automatic-rifle fire and grenades was that they were after the Russians. If St. James is a symbol of anything, it may be a kind of openhearted evangelical hospitality, extended to squalid black shacktowns of nearby Khayelitsha township and to homesick fishermen from visiting Russian trawlers.

There were 140 of the seamen sitting with the multiracial congregation at the 7 P.M. service, listening happily to a duet of the gospel tune "More Than Wonderful," when the gore and splinters of pews began to fly. "I wonder if it's because we have Russians in our church," Miss Harris remembered thinking for a moment, before recalling the end of the cold war and chiding herself, "Oh goodness, that would be old." This war, she realized, is against her, people like her, and their half-realized dream of South Africa's future.

The attack, which left 12 worshipers dead (including 3 of the hapless Russians) and more than 50 wounded in the cozy Cape Town suburb of Kenilworth, was the most horrific in the eight months since the opening of a mysterious terrorist war on white suburbia. Except that the killers were black and very efficient, little is known for certain about their identities or motives, leaving white South Africa to its fearful speculations: black militants, hired guns, rogue police or perhaps, as the Rev. Ross Anderson surmised, some diabolical "blood lust" beyond politics.

The killing of people at prayer stunned South African whites with a fresh premonition of the carnage they expect en route to the country's first universal elections next April. But if, as many assumed, the carnage was intended to frighten South Africa off its course of negotiated change, it seemed likely to have just the opposite effect. Negotiators laboring over a constitution say each massacre is another reminder that only a credible, elected government stands a chance of restoring order.

St. James is a congregation more of the future than of the past. It has welcomed worshipers of all races for all of its 25 years, even when the mixed-race residents known as coloreds were being forcibly expelled from the neighborhood in the years of apartheid. The congregation Sunday included whites and blacks, and parishioners of mixed race and Indian heritage. Since President F. W. de Klerk renounced segregation three years ago, the neighborhood and the church have grown more diverse: Miss Harris, a 21-year-old student of English and drama, said her church youth group is two-thirds nonwhite. "It's a place where I feel at home," said Lorenzo Smith, a parishioner of mixed race whose wife died of a shrapnel shard to the heart even though he was sprawled on top of her in the aisle.

The church belongs to a breakaway Anglican denomination that split with the Church of England in the last century and now practices fervent, missionary evangelism. The onslaught Sunday night followed the pattern of other killings in attacks that have laid waste to a golf club, a family steak restaurant, commuters driving their children to school and a hotel bar. A black man in blue overalls burst through the door of the modern pentagonal church and sprayed the pews with an R-4 automatic rifle, the standard military weapon in South Africa and its black homelands.

Then a second assailant stepped up and rolled a grenade beneath the pews -- "like he was bowling," Sean Savage recalled. It exploded under a row of Russian sailors, blowing the legs off one of them and leaving a small crater in the blue carpet. Someone lofted a second grenade into the back rows. This being gun-saturated South Africa, few among the 1,300 worshipers were surprised when one of their number pulled a pistol from the holster tucked in his blue jeans and fired back. He chased the killers out and watched them peel way in an old green Mercedes Benz.

The church today looked like it had been hit by a blood storm. Blood smeared the pews and puddled on the carpet alongside a prayer book cleanly pierced by a single bullet. Outside, survivors filled the vacuum with theories. The leading candidate was the black radical fringe. Some of the earlier attacks on whites have been claimed by the guerrilla wing of the Pan Africanist Congress. Anonymous callers today both asserted and denied responsibility in the name of that organization.

This suggested, painfully, that the church might have been selected because of its outreach in the wretched township of Khayelitsha. An English missionary at St. James was shot in April while organizing a soccer game for children in the township. Others observed that the church -- English-speaking, multiracial -- would be a natural target for white Afrikaner fanatics or malcontents in the state security forces. Still others mused that the church was chosen, as terrorist targets often are, simply to announce that anyone, anywhere is vulnerable.

The images of blood-smeared Bibles may drive more whites to emigrate or seek the solace of the white separatist fringe. But among the parishioners of St. James, the fear was countered by resilience and resignation, some talk that God had ordained them to stay, and a much-discussed appreciation that this is what township blacks face routinely. Pastor Anderson, an intensely calm 35-year-old who last month turned down a minister's job in Raleigh, N.C., said he would do the same if the offer came today.

Jenny Johnston and her husband, Owen, said the subject of emigration had come up again. She said she was still haunted by "the smell of ammunition and damaged bodies," and was terrified for her three children, but was not yet willing to leave. "Even after last night's disaster, this is my country," she said.

Source: New York Times

Human Rights and Universal Responsibility

The key to creating a better and more peaceful world is the development of love and compassion for others. This naturally means we must develop concern for our brothers and sisters who are less fortunate than we are. In this respect, the non-governmental organizations have a key role to play. You not only create awareness for the need to respect the rights of all human beings, but also give the victims of human rights violations hope for a better future.

It is mainly the authoritarian and totalitarian regimes who are opposed to the universality of human rights. It would be absolutely wrong to concede to this view. On the contrary, such regimes must be made to respect and conform to the universally accepted principles in the larger and long term interests of their own peoples. The dramatic changes in the past few years clearly indicate that the triumph of human rights is inevitable.

I, for one, strongly believe that individuals can make a difference in society. Every individual has a responsibility to help more our global family in the right direction and we must each assume that responsibility. As a Buddhist monk, I try to develop compassion within myself, not simply as a religious practice, but on a human level as well. To encourage myself in this altruistic attitude, I sometimes find it helpful to imagine myself standing as a single individual on one side, facing a huge gathering of all other human beings on the other side. Then I ask myself, 'Whose interests are more important?' To me it is quite clear that however important I may feel I am, I am just one individual while others are infinite in number and importance.

བསྟན་འཛིན་རྒྱ་མཚོ་
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Source: The Government of Tibet in Exile

Toll in Liberian Massacre Doubles; U.N. Opens Investigation

Medical workers in Liberia said today that 547 bodies had been buried after a massacre of civilians on Sunday and that the death toll could reach 600. The interim Government has ordered two investigations into the killings, at Carter Camp, a farming area near Harbel, and officials said the Government forces did not do enough to stop the massacre. Survivors and the Government say that Charles Taylor's rebel group, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, carried out the killings.

On Wednesday, the President's office authorized the Defense Ministry to investigate the "alleged negligence of soldiers leading to the infiltration of rebels and the massacre of more than 400 men, women and children by Charles Taylor's rebels." Mr. Taylor's group has repeatedly denied responsibility and says a West African intervention force and the Government militia are to blame. Health workers at Harbel, 40 miles east of Monrovia, said most of the dead were women and children. They said more bodies had been found in the Du River and along its banks.

The international force captured the Harbel area from the rebels in February and controls it nominally, but the Government militia was guarding Carter Camp on the night of the massacre. The intervention force was sent to Liberia in 1990 by the Economic Community of West African states in an attempt to end the civil war. In addition to the Defense Ministry investigation, the interim President, Amos Sawyer, ordered a military advisory board to investigate the killings, and the United Nations special representative to Liberia, Trevor Gordon-Somers, arrived Wednesday to make his own investigation.

UNITED NATIONS, June 10 (Reuters) -- The Security Council has condemned the massacre in Liberia and warned that the killers will be held accountable. In a statement Wednesday, the Council "warns that those found responsible for such serious violations of international humanitarian law will be held accountable for such crimes." The statement did not explain how the killers might be punished.

The statement asked Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to begin a "thorough and full investigation" of the massacre, including "any allegations as to the perpetrators, whoever they may be." Mr. Boutros-Ghali's special envoy, Trevor Gordon-Somers, had arrived in Liberia Wednesday before the statement was announced, and the Council urged all parties to cooperate with him to negotiate an end to the three-year civil war, which has left tens of thousands dead.

The statement was delayed a day because West African nations wanted a mention of Charles Taylor, head of the rebel group accused by witnesses and the Government of carrying out the killings.

Source: New York Times

A Black Leader in South Africa Is Slain and a White Is Arrested

Chris Hani, the leader of the South African Communist Party and the most popular militant in the African National Congress, was shot and killed in the driveway of his home today, casting another anxious gloom over the country's transition to majority rule. The police said they had arrested a 40-year-old white man, identified as Januzu Jakub Waluz, whose car license number was taken down by Mr. Hani's neighbors as he fled the racially mixed neighborhood. They declined to say if he was known to have any political affiliation. The Sunday Times of Johannesburg, in a story prepared for its Sunday issue, said the suspect was a Polish immigrant with violently anti-Communist views and "close links" to a militant white nationalist group, the Afrikaner Resistance Movement. Blow to Negotiations

The assassination of Mr. Hani is a staggering blow to the African National Congress as it tries to negotiate the end of white rule. With his credentials as an anti-apartheid guerrilla leader and his charismatic appeal to angry young blacks, Mr. Hani gave the congress credibility among its most disaffected constituents. Before being elected General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1991, Mr. Hani was the chief of staff of the congress's military wing, Spear of the Nation. He remained on the congress's governing board, and took part in the political negotiations on the transition to majority rule as part of a congress-led alliance. Judging by public opinion polls and by votes at congress conventions, Mr. Hani, 50, was second only to Nelson Mandela in popularity among blacks, and he was on most short lists of candidates to eventually succeed Mr. Mandela, the 74-year-old president of the congress. Without Mr. Hani, it will be harder to sell any compromise in the black townships and to galvanize young voters for the first all-race elections, expected to take place in about a year. Call for Suspension of Talks One congress militant, Harry Gwala, called tonight for suspension of the talks in which the country's political factions are trying to agree on the mechanics of a new democracy. But his demand was not echoed by more mainstream congress leaders.

Mr. Mandela issued a statement full of grief but containing no hint of recrimination. He appealed "with all the authority at my command" for followers to remain calm and forgo reprisals. Tonight, state television interrupted its programming for Mr. Mandela's brief tribute to Mr. Hani, an unprecedented move that underscored the Government's eagerness to defuse tensions from the killing. To many white South Africans, Mr. Hani has long symbolized the militant Bolshevism they feared would come to power on Mr. Mandela's coattails.

President F. W. de Klerk, who has often used Mr. Hani and the Communist Party as favorite bogies, said the killing would "undermine the work of people of good will from all political persuasions who strove for a peaceful future." "He and I were at opposite poles of the political debate," Mr. de Klerk said. "But we were both prepared to resolve the problems of our country through the process of peaceful negotiations." The campaign for black equality in South Africa has left a trail of carnage, including the deaths of several anti-apartheid campaigners under suspicious circumstances. But this was the first assassination of a black leader of such popular standing.

The killing appeared to leave the Communist Party bereft. No other black Communist has Mr. Hani's stature, and among the party's white leaders only Joe Slovo, 66, and ailing, is so widely respected. Mr. Slovo, who holds the largely ceremonial post of party chairman, has been an important member of the A.N.C. negotiating team, where he has developed a reputation as a master of compromise. The Communist Party has an emotional cachet, especially among young blacks who enjoy the horror the party causes among whites, but it has little organization and, since the demise of Communism in Europe, almost no financial backing. Mr. Hani had said the party would campaign in the coming elections as part of a bloc with the African National Congress and other allies, not as an independent party.

Some moderates had suggested that if an African National Congress government had run into trouble, Mr. Hani might ultimately have been tempted to lead the disgruntled against it. But in recent months he worked to shore up the congress's fractious militant wing, and set out to assert control over so-called self-defense units, armed gangs that have often run riot under the banner of the African National Congress. In the last week Mr. Hani had been promoting the creation of a township "peace corps" to curb violence in the townships. "He had the credibility among the young to rein in the radicals," Archbishop Desmond Tutu said.

Mr. Hani was killed when he returned to his home in a racially mixed subdivision of the predominantly white suburb of Boksburg, southeast of Johannesburg, after driving to buy newspapers. The African National Congress said he had given his two bodyguards the day off. Fired Four Shots According to a neighbor who watched the killing, interviewed by The Sunday Times, the killer emerged from a red Ford, walked up to Mr. Hani as he locked his car, and fired two shots into his chest. He then leaned over the body and fired two more shots into Mr. Hani before fleeing. The neighbor memorized the license number and called the police, who stopped the car and found the suspect with two pistols.

Mr. Hani had survived two assassination attempts in the early 1980's, when he was a top official in the congress's underground anti-apartheid army. Mr. Hani was born Martin Thembisile Hani on June 28, 1942, in the black homeland of Transkei. Studied Classical Literature He studied classical literature, and contemplated becoming either a Roman Catholic priest or a lawyer before turning to the anti-apartheid struggle. He joined the African National Congress Youth League in 1957, and two years after the congress was banned in 1960, Mr. Hani slipped out of the country to enlist in its armed wing. He served as chief of staff, the No. 2 post in the organization, from 1987 until 1992. In 1983 he took part in the suppression of a mutiny by guerrilla dissidents in training camps, but denied in later years that he joined in the arrests, killings and torture that followed. He also fought alongside black rebels against white rule in what was then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

Mr. Hani had been a member of the congress's governing National Executive Committee since 1975. When the congress voted in July 1991 to renew the executive committee, Mr. Hani drew more votes from the party's local leaders than anyone else. Mr. Mandela, as president, was automatically on the committee and was not on the ballot. Mr. Hani's near cult following among the poorest blacks is demonstrated by the fact that several squatter camps have been named in his honor. Along with Cyril Ramaphosa, the secretary general of the congress, and Thabo Mbeki, the head of the international department, Mr. Hani was considered a leading candidate to take over eventually from Mr. Mandela. Mr. Mandela himself, in an interview this year, included Mr. Hani among those he considered qualified to preside over the congress.

But when Mr. Hani agreed in December 1991 to replace Mr. Slovo, who has cancer, as leader of the Communist Party, many in the A.N.C. felt he had ruled himself out for the top job. Although Communists have always been prominent in the congress, no Communist has ever held the top job. Mr. Hani knew that the Communist Party alarmed white South Africans, but he reveled in the notoriety. "Every time they bash us, we get more and more support among the workers and the poor in this country, especially among the black population," he said in an interview last year. He is survived by his wife, Limpho, and three children.

WASHINGTON, April 10 (Reuters) -- The State Department deplored the killing of Mr. Hani today, saying it showed the need to move ahead with multiparty talks in South Africa.

"The assassination of Chris Hani is a deplorable and troubling event," the State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, said in a statement. "It underscores the urgent need to end violence in the country and to push ahead with the negotiations which will create a democratic South Africa."

Source: New York Times

Haiti's Security Forces Allow March by Aristide's Backers

For the first time since a September 1991 military coup ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the Haitian military and the police today allowed supporters of the exiled President to march in the capital.

Watched by six observers from the United Nations and Organization of American States, a group of 10 Roman Catholic priests led 300 people in a religious procession with political overtones for some 500 yards. "We believe this is a major victory," said the Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste, a leading supporter of Father Aristide. "For the first time we have been able to walk out freely and express ourselves," said Father Jean-Juste.

The marchers sang hymns and recited prayers most of the way, but at the end of the procession, about a third of the participants broke into chants of "Aristide or death!" while activists scattered leaflets calling for his return. No uniformed soldiers or police were visible at any time.

Father Jean-Juste said plans for a mile-long march across the city center were canceled because of threats and because senior church authorities refused to authorize the procession.

Source: New York Times

Haiti's Ruling Elite Reach 'Decisive Moment'

As expectations rise for a solution to this country's political crisis, so is the anxiety among Haiti's small but powerful elite. From the swank restaurants that hug the mountainsides around the capital to the air-conditioned mansions of the rich, the swagger of nearly 200 years of dominance is giving way to recrimination, introspection and vows of defiance in the face of renewed determination by the international community to restore Haiti's exiled President, the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

For many of the wealthy, their fierce opposition to Father Aristide's return is justified by what they say is the exiled leader's penchant for class struggle. Although international human rights groups have criticized Father Aristide for appearing at times to justify the use of violence by his supporters, they say there were few actual cases of politically motivated attacks during his tenure. From his exile, moreover, Father Aristide has repeatedly rejected the politics of revenge.

At least as powerful as these fears, many of the elite admit, are feelings of guilt over the 18 months of repressive violence and its untold hundreds of victims, whose lives have been the price of the ouster of Father Aristide. Also lurking in their thoughts is the fear that any lasting settlement of this country's perennial instability will require a lessening of deeply rooted privileges that economists say has made the gap between rich and poor in Haiti as large as anywhere in the world. "What you have here is a powerful bunch of people with incredible privileges," said an economist with a long career in international development who arrived recently to produce a study of the Haitian economy. "They enjoy duty-free imports, they pay no taxes and labor costs them next to nothing. I have never seen any place quite like this in the world and changing it will not be easy."

One young pharmaceutical wholesaler added: "The elite of this country must admit that it has failed at its task for over 40 years. We may dislike Aristide, but how do we explain that we have never provided for education for the people, or seen to it that even their most basic needs are met?"

A similar view was expressed by a veteran journalist with Le Nouvelliste, a conservative paper that, partly because of Haiti's widespread illiteracy, is mostly read by the well-to-do. "We have played badly, and it is time to accept the fact that if the country has reached this state of affairs, it is our responsibility," the journalist said. "The problem here is that the truly wealthy live so separately from the rest of the population that the reality of the country is not within their grasp."

For Dante Caputo, the United Nations mediator who has been negotiating a solution to the crisis, the differences in the way the wealthy few and the rest of the population perceive Haiti's crisis has been at the center of the difficulties in navigating a path for Father Aristide's peaceful return.

Diplomats say the wealthy and their allies in the military must be protected against vengeance attacks, while the poor must be allowed the freedom of expression and the benefits of Government largess that since the country's foundation in 1804 have been the exclusive franchise of the rich. "In the next few days we will see if the Haitian society can be made aware of the need for a fresh beginning, a clean break from the past," Mr. Caputo said, adding that negotiations over the country's future had reached a "decisive moment."

Mr. Caputo, a former Argentine Foreign Minister, was forced to cancel a consultative meeting with members of the country's Chamber of Commerce last week when it became clear that it was intended more as humiliating demonstration of their rejection of Father Aristide than a sincere exchange of views. With over 200 businessmen gathered in a hall shouting angrily even before he arrived, Mr. Caputo abruptly called off his appearance.

Diplomats say they are confident that a settlement is within reach despite sentiments like these. But held in reserve as leverage just in case, they say, is the prospect of a disastrous crash of the Haitian economy, which many feel is imminent. With no settlement, or with stiffer sanctions as the price for the elite's failure to cooperate, one foreign economist said this country "will soon be hanging dead from a noose."

Still, there are those who resist. "We are the sons of the soldiers of the independence of this country," said Serge Beaulieu, a radio broadcaster whose populist style and radical conservatism appeals to many here. "We are going to fight, maybe we will die, but we will fight."

Source: New York Times

THE CIA'S HAITIAN CONNECTION

Although the Clinton administration insists it is making every effort to return ousted Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power, covert connections between Haiti's military junta and the CIA may be helping to keep the regime in place.

Confidential government documents obtained by the Bay Guardian show that the CIA helped establish and finance Haiti's powerful National Intelligence Service, which played a key role in the 1991 coup and continues to provide paramilitary muscle for the anti-Aristide dictatorship. As recently as February 1993, a confidential congressional report described the NIS as "working closely" with the CIA.

The documents-along with interviews with members of Congress, senior administration sources, and a high-ranking member of Aristide's cabinet-in-exile-raise troubling questions about Clinton's policy toward the tiny, impoverished Caribbean nation and provide strong evidence to support critics who claim the United States is giving little more than lip service to the cause of Haitian democracy.

Among other things, the Bay Guardian has learned:

Haitian Lt. Col. Joseph Michel Francois-the reputed kingpin behind the military junta-was trained at a clandestine U.S. Army combat facility known as the "coup school," whose alumni also include jailed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and former Salvadoran president Roberto d'Aubuisson.

Paramilitary death squads controlled by Francois and Frank Romain, the former mayor of Port-au-Prince, are carrying out what some critics call a systematic attempt to wipe out Aristide's base of support, making it difficult if not impossible for the ousted president to reclaim political power. The death squads, known as attaches have been linked to roughly 4,000 murders since the coup.

Former Haitian officials and congressional sources link Francois and the NIS to a massive drug-smuggling and money-laundering operation that sends at least a billion dollars worth of cocaine a year to the United States. Aristide's attempt to crack down on the drug ring may have helped spark the coup-and since the military junta took power, cocaine exports have soared.

In fact, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency operative who was investigating an NIS officer allegedly involved in drug smuggling had to flee Haiti in 1992 after receiving death threats on a private telephone line with a secret number known only to a few top government officials.

At least two senior members of Congress, Rep. Charles Rangel and Rep. Major Owens, both New York Democrats, told the Bay Guardian they have enough reason to suspect CIA involvement in the Aristide coup that they are calling for a full congressional investigation.

HALF HEARTED EFFORTS

As the crisis in Haiti drags on and the military junta refuses to relinquish power, critics have charged that the United States is making only token efforts to restore Aristide to office.

Larry Burns, an analyst at the Washington, D.C.-based Council on Hemispheric Relations, pointed out that the United States has not fully participated in the United Nations embargo of Haiti (unlike most other countries, the U.S. has exempted its own companies in Haiti from the embargo). It's also curious, he told the Bay Guardian, that the Clinton administration has failed to make a public issue of the military regime's role in drug trafficking-a tactic that the Bush administration used extensively to discredit Panama's Manuel Noriega.

"You would think that the White House would want, as one of its major points, to pin the drug tail on the military donkey in Haiti," Burns said. "It would be their best opportunity to rally the American people to a pro-Aristide position. Yet they never used it."

White House Deputy Press Secretary Don Steinberg told the Bay Guardian that "there's nothing halfhearted about our administration's commitment to returning democracy to Haiti and Aristide to power."

"We sent military trainers to Haiti, we've supported the embargo, and we've fully supported the Governor's Island accords," which were supposed to lead to Aristide's return, Steinberg said. "This administration has not for a second coddled Francois or Cedras." Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras heads the military junta.

But Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) said he was worried that the administration's silence on the military's connection to the drug trade would only embolden the junta and tighten its grip on power.

"We have turned a very deaf ear to what is obviously a moving force," he said. "It leads you to wonder if our silence is because we knew this was going on and that our complicity in drug activity may parallel the accusations that were raised about our involvement in drug activities-that is, our government and the Central Intelligence Agency's-during the Vietnam conflict."

Although they admit they have no hard evidence, both Rangel and Aristide's exiled interior minister, Patrick Elie, told the Bay Guardian they see shadows of the ClA's hidden hand behind the September 1991 coup, which overthrew Aristide after only seven months in office.

"I don't have a specific answer as to whether the CIA was involved," Rangel said. "But I do know that our feelings against Aristide were made pretty clear before the coup."

Rangel was referring to the Bush administration's open backing of former World Bank official Marc Bizan against Aristide. But in a show of popular support that caught the Bush administration by surprise, Aristide received 67.5 percent of the vote, while Bizan captured only 13 percent.

Elie told the Bay Guardian that the relationship between the CIA and Haiti's National Intelligence Service went far beyond mere cooperation.

"In fact," he said "the NIS was created by the Central Intelligence Agency. It was created by it and funded by it."

Elie, whose job included oversight of the NIS, launched an investigation shortly after taking office that revealed that the CIA had covertly given the NIS $500,000-twice what the U.S. government was providing Haiti overtly for drug interdiction.

He said that although the NIS was supposed to be used to combat drug smugglers, "in fact, all the NIS has done has been political repression and spying on Haitians."

Records of the Drug Enforcement Administration confirm that the NIS operates with CIA assistance. According to a confidential DEA document titled "Drug Trafficking in Haiti," presented to members of Congress in February 1993 and obtained by the Bay Guardian, the NIS "is a covert counter-narcotics intelligence unit which often works in unison with the CIA."

On Sept. 26, 1992, the report states, the DEA itself was driven from Haiti when its main agent was forced to flee the country after receiving death threats. DEA attaché Tony Greco received the threats on his private line in the U.S. embassy, "given out to only a few trusted individuals," the memo says, within a week of his providing information that led to the arrest of a NIS officer for drug trafficking. "The unidentified threat," the report states, "came from an individual who claims to control many Haitian soldiers in the narcotics distribution trade."

Rep. Major Owens (D-N.Y.), who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus task force on Haiti, told the Bay Guardian: "I worry about the CIA having had a role in the overthrow of the Aristide government. The Congressional Black Caucus has joined with congressman Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.) in calling for a full-scale investigation. "

Bay Guardian phone calls to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., were not returned. Steinberg said he knew nothing about possible CIA involvement in the coup and was "hearing about it for the first time." He refused to comment on the allegations of drug smuggling.

THE SCHOOL OF COUPS

Rangel, who has traveled several times to Haiti and is close to the deposed administration of Aristide, told the Bay Guardian that although Cedras heads the junta, Francois, who is also Port-au-Prince's chief of police, wields the real power.

Francois, Rangel said, "has been targeted as being directly responsible for the recent murder of [Justice Minister] Guy Malary," who was dragged out of church, beaten, and killed on Oct. 14.

Michel Francois learned some of his skills right here in the United States. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army's School of the Americas (SOA), which Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of SOA Watch in Columbus Georgia, described as a "combat and counterinsurgency training facility for soldiers from Central and South America and the Caribbean."

White House spokesperson Steinberg didn't deny that Francois had attended the Army training school. "But just because he graduated from SOA doesn't mean he has U.S. government intelligence connections," Steinberg said. "A lot of people graduate from that school."

Bourgeois said SOA was founded in 1946 and operated in Panama until it was kicked out in 1984 as part of the canal treaty. It was reestablished in Ft. Benning, Ga.

"In Latin America," he said, "it's known as La Escuela de Golpes, the school of coups," because of the achievements of some of its 55,000 graduates, including d'Aubuisson; Noriega, who is serving 40 years in federal prison for drug trafficking; Gen. Hugo Banzer, who ruled as Bolivia's dictator from 1971 to 1978; and Hector Gramajo, Guatemala's former defense minister who helped oversee years of
brutal repression in that country and was the guest speaker at SOA's graduation in December 1991.

On March 15, 1993, the United Nations Truth Commission released its report on El Salvador and, Bourgeois said, "about 75 percent of the officers cited in the most serious massacres, including the killing of six Jesuit priests, the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, and the rape and murder of four U.S. nuns, were SOA graduates."

Bay Guardian calls to SOA were not returned.

DRUG MONEY

The coup and resulting embargo may have left thousands of Haitians dead and created terrible hardship for many thousands more, but it's apparently been quite profitable for the drug traffickers.

According to a Feb. 10, 1993, memo from one of Conyers' congressional staffers, a copy of which was obtained by the Bay Guardian, "the wholesale value of Haiti's drug industry on the U.S. market is now equal to $1 billion a year, which equals the entire revenue of Haiti's population of six million.

"Haiti has become the second most important transshipment point, after the Bahamas, for cocaine shipments from Colombia to the U.S.," the memo states.

The DEA's "Drug Trafficking in Haiti" document also says that Haiti is believed to be a main center for laundering of drug money.

One of Elie's key tasks was to have been overseeing the drug interdiction efforts, and he had developed an extensive program that included close cooperation with U.S. agencies. But the program was barely off the ground when the coup drove him into hiding in Haiti-and five months later, into the United States. (He has since fled the U.S., fearing for his life, and called the Bay Guardian from an undisclosed location because he was told there is a $750,000 contract on his head. Three pro-Aristide radio broadcasters have been murdered in Florida.)

"While I was in hiding," he said, "I monitored Michel Francois over the airwaves directing the landing of a [drug smuggling] plane right in the middle of Port-au-Prince. I immediately notified the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince. I was in touch with the CIA main agent there at the time, and I gave him the time and date of that landing.

"I don't know if he did anything with it. Since the coup, despite our repeated attempts to continue this collaboration with the U.S. as the legitimate government of Haiti, we were met with stonewalling."

Elie's account is supported by the memo to Conyers, which stated that after the coup, "all those jailed for drug-trafficking have been released and...Michel Francois has personally supervised the landing of planes carrying drugs and weapons."

And a September 1992 State Department report titled "International Narcotics Control Strategy Report: Mid-Year Update" noted that "although President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was planning new policies and institutions to combat narcotics trafficking, his ouster...crippled narcotics control efforts in Haiti."

Meanwhile, observers say, the violence continues-targeted largely at the popular organizations that helped bring Aristide to power. As part of the reign of terror, death lists are being posted in small Haitian villages, Liam Mahoney, an independent human rights monitor in Haiti, told the Bay Guardian by phone on Nov. 3.

The military regime so far has ignored the Governor's Island accords that on Oct. 30 called for Aristide's return to power, leading some to speculate that the junta wants to completely destroy Aristide's power base before they allow him to return-if they allow him to return at all.

"If something is not done soon, there will be no Aristide supporters left," said Rep. Owens. "They will all be destroyed."

Source: Global research.ca

2,500 at Rally in Haiti Urge Return of Aristide

A funeral Mass today for victims of last week's ferry disaster turned into the largest demonstration in support of the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide since he was was overthrown as President in September 1991.

About 2,500 people attended the two-hour service for the 600 to 900 people who perished when the ferry Neptune sank on Feb. 16. At least a dozen times, people chanted "Aristide or death!" Representatives of the military-backed Government did not attend. Despite efforts by the head of a United Nations human rights mission to maintain calm, several demonstrators were arrested outside the cathedral after scuffling with bystanders shouting anti-Aristide slogans.

Bishop Willy Romelus, a prominent Haitian clergyman who gave the funeral oration, was attacked when he left the cathedral and was rescued when a half-dozen members of the United Nations delegation jumped between him and the attackers.

Source: New York Times

Thousands Are Fleeing Togo After New Spate of Killings

Women carrying children on their backs trudged along the beach today toward Ghana, joining an exodus of thousands fleeing new attacks by soldiers. Soldiers loyal to Togo's leader, Gen. Gnassingbe Eyadema, are accused of killing hundreds of political opponents to keep him in power. Six people were killed over the weekend, in an area known as an opposition stronghold, in the latest outbreak of violence. About 100 troops and paramilitary police also ransacked central Lome and nearby suburbs today.

President Eyadema, who has ruled this West African nation since 1967, agreed in 1991 to let opposition parties install a transitional Government, but then blocked its efforts to take power.

Source: New York Times