Strife in Sierra Leone

More than 30,000 Sierra Leoneans have fled into Guinea after a rebel attack on the northern town of Kambia last week, overwhelming towns in the border area, local officials in Guinea said. Mohamed Mounir Camara, the prefect of the border town of Pamelap, said on Saturday that food and drugs were urgently needed.

Rebels struck Kambia last Wednesday, kidnapping seven foreign nuns and a number of local people. The refugees said several people were killed in the attack. At the Gbalamouya border crossing, refugees carrying their belongings on their heads were crossing into Guinea, while others were heading back to collect their belongings.

Source: New York Times

INTELLIGENCE SERVICES OVERSIGHT ACT 40 OF 1994

The purpose of the Intelligence Services Oversight Act is to provide for the establishment of a Committee of Members of Parliament on Intelligence and to define its functions; and for the appointment of Inspectors-General of Intelligence and to define their functions; and to provide for matters connected therewith.

Establishment of Committee on Intelligence

There is hereby established a Parliamentary Committee to be known as the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence, which shall, subject to the Constitution, perform the oversight functions set out in this Act-

(a) in relation to the intelligence and counter-intelligence functions of the Services, which include the administration, financial management and expenditure of the Services; and
(b) in respect of the administration, financial management and expenditure of the Intelligence Services Entities,

and report thereon to Parliament.

Source: SABINET

NATIONAL STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE ACT 39 OF 1994

The purpose of the National Strategic Intelligence Act is to define the functions of members of the National Intelligence Structures; to establish a national Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee and to define its functions in respect of intelligence relating to the security of the Republic; and to provide for the appointment of a Co-ordinator for Intelligence as chairperson of the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee, and to define his or her functions; and to provide for matters connected therewith.

Functions relating to intelligence

(1) The functions of the National Intelligence Agency shall be:
(a) to gather, correlate, evaluate and analyse domestic intelligence, in order to -
(i) identify any threat or potential threat to the security of the Republic or its people;
(ii) supply intelligence regarding any such threat to the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee;
(b) to fulfil the national counter-intelligence responsibilities and for this purpose to conduct and coordinate counter-intelligence and to gather, correlate, evaluate, analyse and interpret information regarding counter-intelligence in order to:
(i) identify any threat or potential threat to the security of the Republic or its people;
(ii) inform the President of any such threat;
(iii) supply (where necessary) intelligence relating to any such threat to the South African Police Service for the purposes of investigating any offence or alleged offence; and
(iv) supply intelligence relating to any such threat to the Department of Home Affairs for the purposes of fulfilment of any immigration function; and
(v) supply intelligence relating to national strategic intelligence to the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee;
(c) to gather departmental intelligence at the request of any interested department of State, and, without delay to evaluate and transmit such intelligence and any other intelligence at the disposal of the Agency and which constitutes departmental intelligence, to the department concerned and to National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee.
(2) It shall, subject to section 3, be the functions of the Service -
(a) to gather, correlate, evaluate and analyse foreign intelligence, excluding foreign military intelligence, in order to -
(i) identify any threat or potential threat to the security of the Republic or its people;
(ii) supply intelligence relating to any such threat to the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee;
(b) to institute -
(i) counter-intelligence measures within the Service; and
(ii) in consultation with the Agency, counter-intelligence measures outside the Republic; and
(c) to gather departmental intelligence at the request of any interested department of State, and, without delay to evaluate and transmit such intelligence and any other intelligence at the disposal of the Service and which constitutes departmental intelligence, to the department concerned and to the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee.
(3) It shall be the function of the South African Police Service:
(a) to gather, correlate, evaluate, co-ordinate and use crime intelligence in support of the objects of the South African Police Service as contemplated in section 205(3) of the Constitution;
(b) to institute counter-intelligence measures within the South African Police Service;
(c) to supply crime intelligence relating to national strategic intelligence to the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee.
(4) The National Defence Force shall, subject to section 3 -
(a) gather, correlate, evaluate and use foreign military intelligence, and supply foreign military intelligence relating to national strategic intelligence to the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee, but the National Defence Force shall not gather intelligence of a non-military nature in a covert manner;
(b) gather, correlate, evaluate and use domestic military intelligence excluding covert collection and supply such intelligence to the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee; and
(c) institute counter-intelligence measures within the National Defence Force.

Establishment of National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee ("Nicoc")

(1) There is hereby established a National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee, which shall consist of -
(b) the Co-ordinator for Intelligence appointed under section 5 (1), who shall be the chairperson;
(c) the Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency;
(d) the Director-General of the South African Secret Service;
(e) the chief of the intelligence division of the National Defence Force; and
(f) the head of the intelligence division of the South African Police Service,
or the alternates of the persons mentioned in paragraphs (b) to (f), and such members of departments of State who are co-opted by Nicoc on a permanent or an ad hoc basis.
(2) The functions of Nicoc shall be -
(a) to co-ordinate the intelligence supplied by the members of the National Intelligence Structures to Nicoc and interpret such intelligence for use by the State and the Cabinet for the purposes of -
(i) the detection and identification of any threat or potential threat to the national security of the Republic;
(ii) the protection and promotion of the national interests of the Republic;
(b) for the purposes of the functions contemplated in paragraph (a) -
(i) to coordinate and prioritise intelligence activities within the National Intelligence Structures;
(ii) to prepare and interpret intelligence estimates;
(c) to produce and disseminate intelligence which may have an influence on any state policy with regard to matters referred to in paragraph (a) for consideration by the Cabinet;
(d) after consultation with the departments of the State entrusted with the maintenance of the security of the Republic, to coordinate the flow of national strategic intelligence between such departments;
(e) at the request of any Department of State, to coordinate the gathering of intelligence and without delay to evaluate and transmit such intelligence and any other intelligence at the disposal of the National Intelligence Structures and which constitutes departmental intelligence, to the department concerned; and
(f) to make recommendations to the Cabinet on intelligence priorities.
(3) The Agency shall provide logistical, technical and administrative support to Nicoc.

Source: SABINET

PUBLIC PROTECTOR ACT 23 OF 1994

The purpose of the Public Protector Act is to provide for matters incidental to the office of the Public Protector as contemplated in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996; and to provide for matters connected therewith.

WHEREAS sections 181 to 183 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (Act No 108 of 1996), provide for the establishment of the office of Public Protector and that the Public Protector has the power, as regulated by national legislation, to investigate any conduct in state affairs, or in the public administration in any sphere of government, that is alleged or suspected to be improper or to have resulted in any impropriety or prejudice, to report on that conduct and to take appropriate remedial action, in order to strengthen and support constitutional democracy in the Republic;

AND WHEREAS sections 193 and 194 of the Constitution provide for a mechanism for the appointment and removal of the Public Protector;

AND WHEREAS the Constitution envisages further legislation to provide for certain ancillary matters pertaining to the office of Public Protector:

Establishment and appointment

(1) There shall be a Public Protector for the Republic.
(2) The President shall, whenever it becomes necessary, appoint a Public Protector in accordance with the provisions of section 193 of the Constitution.
(3) The Public Protector shall be a South African citizen who is a fit and proper person to hold such office, and who-
(a) is a Judge of a High Court; or
(b) is admitted as an advocate or an attorney and has, for a cumulative period of at least 10 years after having been so admitted, practised as an advocate or an attorney; or
(c) is qualified to be admitted as an advocate or an attorney and has, for a cumulative period of at least 10 years after having so qualified, lectured in law at a university; or
(d) has specialised knowledge of or experience, for a cumulative period of at least 10 years, in the administration of justice, public administration or public finance; or
(e) has, for a cumulative period of at least 10 years, been a member of Parliament; or
(f) has acquired any combination of experience mentioned in paragraphs (b) to (e), for a cumulative period of at least 10 years.
(4) The Public Protector shall not perform remunerative work outside his or her official duties.

Source: SABINET

Police Seize Suspect Obsessed by a Movie

Police officers in Nebraska have captured a Utah teen-ager accused of murdering his stepmother and half-sister after becoming obsessed with the movie "Natural Born Killers."

The 17-year-old suspect, Nathan K. Martinez, was found on Wednesday at a motel in the town of O'Neill, in northeastern Nebraska.

Mr. Martinez is charged in Utah with two counts of aggravated murder in the slaying of his 42-year-old stepmother, Lauren Martinez, and his half-sister, Alexis Martinez, 10, both of whom were shot in their sleep early Sunday at the family's home in Bluffdale, a suburb of Salt Lake City. Mr. Martinez's father and a brother were away on a hunting trip at the time.

Source: New York Times

'Natural Born Killers' Is Banned in Ireland

Ireland has banned the Oliver Stone film "Natural Born Killers" and the British authorities have delayed release of the movie, which is about a couple on a murderous rampage.

Mr. Stone has defended the film, which stars Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, as a satire on how the news media can turn serial killers into celebrities.

The film censor in Ireland, Sheamus Smith, announced the ban on Wednesday without giving a reason. The film was to be released in Ireland on Nov. 18.

The British Board of Film Classification is debating whether to give it a certificate, and its release has now been delayed until next year.

"At the moment, it has not got a classification and the board will not make a comment on a film that has not been classified," a spokesman for the board said today.

Source: New York Times

FILM VIEW; What We Don't Know About TV Could Kill Us

LATE IN THE MEDIA-CRAZED murder spree that is "Natural Born Killers," Mickey and Mallory Knox (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) point their guns at Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.), the unctuous Australian star of a tabloid television show. That series, "American Maniacs," has helped make Mickey and Mallory pop-star murderers. Now Mickey turns on the reporter and speaks the truest lines in Oliver Stone's film. He says: "Killing you and what you represent is a statement. I'm not exactly 100 percent sure of what it's saying." But it's a statement, all right.

It wouldn't be fair to reveal whether Mickey pulls the trigger on Wayne, but his confusion about what the trash-TV reporter represents is a perfect reflection of the film's own problems. "Natural Born Killers" seems to say something about the insidious influence of the media -- tabloids and celebrity journalism in print as well as on television. Yet under its entertaining flash-and-dazzle surface, the film's statement is "TV can be a bad influence." No kidding.

"Natural Born Killers" is the first and the least thought-provoking of several films this season that grapple with the love/hate relationship of audiences to the media. Mr. Stone's sensory assault of a movie was followed by Robert Redford's elegant, profound "Quiz Show," which opened on Wednesday. And coming to the New York Film Festival on Oct. 6 is "The Troubles We've Seen," Marcel Ophuls's playfully serious documentary about reporting from Bosnia. When works as different and ambitious as these share a common subject -- that television can turn mass murder, the American dream or even war into entertainment -- the attention to television comes to resemble an obsession.

It's too easy to suggest, though, as "Natural Born Killers" does, that television is the Devil. (A kindhearted American Indian, about to be murdered, sees the words "demon" and "too much TV" superimposed on Mickey.) A sophisticated depiction of television must portray the attraction as well as the repulsion it evokes. Television wouldn't be an overwhelming influence, after all, if people didn't love to watch it.

"Quiz Show" understands television's allure and more; the film's grip on the audience echoes the intense connection between Americans and their favorite shows. The story of how the patrician Charles Van Doren disillusioned the nation when it learned that his game-show victories were rigged goes beyond a simple attack on television. In "Quiz Show" the telegenic Charles Van Doren takes the even grander shape of the movie-star-handsome Ralph Fiennes. This subtle actor's golden-boy manner suggests much about the heroic images -- deeply rooted in American history and dreams of upward mobility -- that television captured and enhanced in the 1950's.

When Herb Stempel (John Turturro), the belligerent loser from Queens, tries to blow the whistle on the deception he has also taken part in, no one -- especially the Harvard-educated Government investigator Richard Goodwin (Rob Morrow) -- wants to believe that this pathetic creature could be morally superior to the glittering, born-for-stardom Van Doren. The film chooses not to believe it, either. Think of how much less palatable, less mainstream the picture would have been if the central character were Stempel, that hard-to-love, charmless man.

"I have deceived my friends, and I have millions of them," Van Doren tells a Congressional committee in the film. No one stops to question the dizzying truth of that remark. In a way that is both real and absurd, television created bonds of friendship and loyalty between the star and his viewers. Struggling with his conscience, Van Doren goes from hero to fallen hero and remains the All-American no one wants to think badly of.

The strength of Paul Attanasio's script is that it depicts the way immense social issues were played out on the television screen in the days when television was still young. "Quiz Show" is the story of social problems that hadn't yet shattered the calm surface of the Eisenhower years: Protestants vs. Jews, money vs. intelligence, entertainment vs. learning, upper class vs. working class. The brilliance of Mr. Redford's direction is that he captures all this just the way television itself did -- smoothly, the calm surface belying epic battles beneath.

The opening and closing scenes suggest a perilous mass-media journey through history. At the start, crowds rush home to watch the quiz show "Twenty-One," and the NBC network proudly announces that the show is carried "coast to coast." Mr. Redford doesn't lean on the fact that we're witnessing the birth of the global village. He simply places us there.

As the final credits appear, faces of audience members laugh in eerie slow motion, magnified and horrendous. We are looking at ourselves as a hapless audience, appalled at our former naivete. "Quiz Show" stays with you, resonating long after you've left the theater, while the kinetic dazzle of "Natural Born Killers" is gone in a flash.

Yet Mr. Stone, too, has made the movie his subject demanded. "Quiz Show" depicts Van Doren on the cover of Time; "Natural Born Killers" depicts Mickey and Mallory on Newsweek. Not much else has stayed the same. Historically, Mr. Stone's story picks up long after "Quiz Show" ends. Television has turned into a forum for instant, disgusting celebrity, in which Charles Manson is a ratings king.

What the film misses is a sense of why television is alluring, of how a mass-murderer can become a star. The more Mr. Stone strains to say something important, the more the intended satire and substance elude him. He seems to have confused a big idea with a broad, simplistic one.

Critics who have been wringing their hands about the film's violence and shallowness dismiss it too easily, though. "Natural Born Killers" is a hit, its box-office appeal creepily echoing the popularity of shows like "American Maniacs." Surely Mr. Stone intended this mirroring effect, but reflecting the appeal doesn't come close to explaining it.

The perverse appeal of "Natural Born Killers" seems to be that it creates the illusion of making a provocative statement. Yet it never challenges the audience's conventional assumptions about television. The film plays into viewers' fascination with tabloid TV as well as their sneaking suspicion that it's bad for them; "Natural Born Killers" presents itself as a guilty pleasure that audiences don't have to feel guilty about.

And the seductive style provides an edge the film doesn't earn. Mr. Downey is so smarmy, funny and convincing that he makes us forget what a cheap, easy target his character is. The ultra-quick cuts, the cartoonlike inserts, the backdrops of newsreels that connect Mickey and Mallory to World War II are portentous, yet anyone who analyzes the film's lame satire won't be surprised by any of it.

THE BANALITY OF THE film's influence is creepier than anything in the movie. Five days after the film opened and became the No. 1 movie in the country, The New York Daily News ran a front-page story about an accused murderer, under the headline "Natural Born Killer." Two days later, after a man who was convinced that television was poisoning his mind killed an NBC stagehand, the New York Post's page 1 headline read "TV Networks Zapped My Brain" and New York Newsday's front-page headline was "TV Drove Me Crazy." No one can blame Oliver Stone for the way his film is used, but the movie's shallowness encourages a simple-minded view that TV is bad.

The subject of television's influence demands a more complex treatment. Marcel Ophuls, whose previous films have been authoritative historical documents about World War II ("The Sorrow and the Pity" and "Hotel Terminus"), has thrown himself into the subject, too.

"The Troubles We've Seen" is more than a series of interviews with television and newspaper reporters covering Bosnia. Mr. Ophuls interweaves these scenes with newsreels and clips of mainstream movies: Bing Crosby sings "White Christmas" in "Holiday Inn," and the Marx Brothers romp through "Duck Soup." "The Troubles We've Seen" creates the sense of trying to grab history as it swirls around us. Demonstrating that history is created through a mix of movies and reportage, Mr. Ophuls uses the documentary form to consider the difficulty of establishing anything like documentary truth.

If the sense that history is fluid seems obvious, consider the remark of a star anchor on French television. He justifies reality-based programs by telling Mr. Ophuls, "Show me a reality show that reconstructs a reality that didn't exist." The producers of "Twenty-One" and Wayne Gale himself couldn't have said it better.

Source: New York Times

2 Ohioans Arrested in Series of Slayings

It was a cross-country crime rampage that began in rural Ohio one week ago with a stolen car, a missing woman and two male suspects. One was an ex-convict fresh out of prison, a man found guilty both of theft and of once biting his own baby so hard that he drew blood. The other was a gangly, troubled 16-year-old described as "a follower," not a violent criminal, by his hometown police chief.

The rampage turned murderous three times over in Missouri and Oklahoma, where the victims' cars were stolen after automobiles taken in previous crimes were abandoned. And it ended this morning, after a nationwide manhunt, with arrests in a dusty culvert at the edge of the mountains around Santa Fe.

But even after serving Federal warrants to 22-year-old Lewis E. Gilbert 2d and Eric A. Elliott, 16, the authorities in Ohio and F.B.I. officials remained puzzled over one peculiar psychological element, uncertain whether the teen-ager had been a willing accomplice, a terrified hostage or something in between.

These authorities said their first priority today was to try to find the missing Ohio woman, 79-year-old Ruth Lucille Loader, who, if still alive, might be able to shed some light on Eric Elliott's motivations. Asleep in a Ditch

The two men were apprehended as they lay in a ditch outside Santa Fe about 9:40 A.M., said Chief John Denko of the New Mexico state police.

Although they had two rifles, a shotgun and a handgun with them, "nothing bad happened" at the arrest scene, said Chief Denko, apparently because the two were taken by surprise as they slept. The police had received two telephone tips about suspicious people in the area.

The suspects were taken to Albuquerque and late this afternoon were charged before a United States magistrate, Lorenzo Garcia, with flight from prosecution. The authorities indicated that the two suspects would soon be extradited to Ohio.

Mr. Gilbert was released from state prison in Ohio on Aug. 15 after serving 11 months of an 18-month sentence for stealing a boat and breaking and entering. Although he had also been convicted of child endangering for a November 1992 incident in which he shook and bit his 3 1/2-month-old son, he was not assigned additional time and received "good time" credit for his behavior in prison, reducing his sentence for the other crimes, said Joe Andrews, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

When he left prison, the 6-foot-4-inch Mr. Gilbert returned almost immediately to Newcomerstown, Ohio, the home of his estranged wife and a place where he was well known to the local authorities.

"With the dealings we've had with him in the past, I consider him a violent person," said the Newcomerstown Police Chief, James Friel. But that was not true of Mr. Elliott, the teen-ager with whom Mr. Gilbert apparently crossed paths shortly after his release.

"Eric seemed like a clean-cut kid," recalled Chief Friel, who said the teen-ager had been working recently as a clerk in the local grocery. "But Eric is the type of individual I would classify as a follower." 'A Typical Teen'

That tendency apparently led Mr. Elliott to be involved in a break-in at the Cy Young Lanes, a local bowling alley, in late July. That brush with the law was his first. About $30 in change from vending machines and some liquor were taken, the owner, Leman Clark, said today in a telephone interview.

"I thought he was a typical teen," Mr. Clark said, recalling his impressions of Mr. Elliott before the break-in. "I didn't think he was a bad kid."

Chief Friel said Eric had been frightened almost to tears by his arrest and pending trial. "He was worried about it constantly, calling the officer to find out what was going on," Chief Friel said. "I don't know if meeting Gilbert pushed him over the edge or what."

Last week Mr. Elliott was spotted with Mr. Gilbert in a 1989 Buick Skylark belonging to the 79-year-old Mrs. Loader, who had been at her farmhouse in Port Washington, Ohio, a few miles from Newcomerstown, recovering from cancer surgery. She is still missing, and the authorities say they fear she was killed for her car.

The Skylark automobile turned up last Thursday more than 600 miles away in Fulton, Mo., stuck in the mud. A few miles from where it was abandoned, the authorities found the bodies of 86-year-old William Brewer and his wife, Flossie, 76, in their home. They had been robbed, and each had been shot three times in the head. Searching for Motive

And their car, a 1981 Oldsmobile Cutlass, was missing. On Sunday, it turned up, also abandoned, on the shore of Lake Stanley Draper, near Oklahoma City. A few hundred feet away, the police found the body of Roxie Ruddel, 37, a security guard at the lake marina. She had been shot to death, and her 1991 Dodge pickup truck was missing. In New Mexico this morning, the state police said, they found an abandoned Dodge truck with Oklahoma license plates a few miles from the culvert where Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Elliott were apprehended, although the authorities have not positively identified it as the one belonging to Ms. Ruddel.

Now the authorities are trying to piece together the crimes, search for a motive. In no case, the authorities said, did the assailants make off with more than $40 in cash.

Officials are also trying to figure out just how willing and active a role Mr. Elliott may have played. His father, Robert, of Cleveland, insisted in recent days that Mr. Elliott was not prone to violence and must have been coerced somehow by Mr. Gilbert.

"Maybe he is in fear to where he thinks he has to go along with what is happening," the father told The Daily Oklahoman over the weekend. "The more I hear reports on this fellow he's supposed to be with, the more concerned I get."

An F.B.I. special agent in Cleveland, Robert Hawk, said, "I'm unaware of any hostage situation, but that's something that will be looked at by us and local authorities."

The intrigue over the case was also compounded by the fact that it appeared to offer eerie overtones of life imitating the movies. As the pair and made their way west, they became the object of widespread news reports, and their violent, seemingly pointless mission was compared to the one depicted in "Natural Born Killers," the recently released Oliver Stone film about the murderous escapades of two deranged lovers.

Still, despite the similarities, the police cautioned today that no evidence had turned up that either suspect had been motivated by the movie or had even seen it.

In Newcomerstown, a rural community of about 12,000 people in south central Ohio, homicide has simply not been a fact of life. "I can't remember when they had a murder down there," said the Tuscarawas County Sheriff, Harold McKimmie. "I've been in office 12 years, and we've never had a murder there in that section of the county."

Source: New York Times

FILM REVIEW: NATURAL BORN KILLERS; Young Lovers With a Flaw That Proves Fatal

MEET Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis), two renegades living out the oldest story in the teen-age wasteland. They're young, they're in love and they kill people, in thrill-crazy, rock-video style. "If I don't kill you," Mickey says to one soon-to-be victim, "what is there to talk about?" For Mickey, it's more than just a rhetorical question.

With more sophistry than poetry, Oliver Stone apotheosizes these trash archetypes in "Natural Born Killers," his supposed satire about an America despoiled by violence and exploitation. Satire? In his skill as a manipulator of thoughts and images, in his short-circuiting ordinary narrative, and in his intuitive visual brilliance, Mr. Stone could well turn out to be the most influential American film maker of his generation. But as a satirist, he's an elephant ballerina.

Scratch the frenzied, hyperkinetic surface of "Natural Born Killers" and you find remarkably banal notions about Mickey, Mallory and the demon media. ("Media's like weather, only it's man-made weather," says Mickey, delivering one of the rare memorable lines in the screenplay.) To wit: Born bad. Blame society. The sins of the fathers. Lost innocence. True love. Wild horses, deadly rattlers, fireworks, freight trains. Elements like these would appear more honestly threadbare if Mr. Stone were not a match for Mickey and Mallory in the area of overkill.

But he has exploded the slender premise of "Natural Born Killers" (from a story by Quentin Tarantino, whose distinctive voice is not heard here) into a firestorm of quick cuts, hot colors, gyroscopic camera movements and emblematic visions. Such techniques, intensified so furiously (thanks to superb editing by Hank Corwin and Brian Berdan) that they become pharmacologically seductive, have a way of obscuring this film's more mundane troubles. Not least of them is the fact that "Natural Born Killers" is dense and unmodulated enough to be exhausting. Despite isolated moments of bleak, disturbing beauty, it is finally less an epiphany than an ordeal. Not for the first time, Mr. Stone assembles an arsenal of visual ideas and then fires away point-blank in his audience's direction. If viewers flinch during this tireless two-hour barrage, are they simply no match for the film maker's tough, unrelenting style? Or has he by now perfected his own form of exploitative fallacy? While "Natural Born Killers" affects occasional disgust at the lurid world of Mickey and Mallory, it more often seems enamored of their exhilarating freedom. If there is a juncture at which these caricatures start looking like nihilist heroes, then the film passes that point many times.

Meanwhile, how can anything Mr. Stone says about his characters be dismissed as tasteless or unfunny, since they themselves are meant to be embodiments of a tasteless world? "I Love Mallory," a grotesque sitcom version of Mallory's childhood, with Rodney Dangerfield in stained underwear as her lecherous father, is fairly typical of the film's light touch. Arriving on the scene as the Prince Charming who will rescue Mallory by helping to murder her parents, Mickey shows up carrying a dripping 50-pound bag of raw meat.

Equally representative is an opening sequence at a roadside restaurant, where Mallory taunts the locals by writhing seductively to the jukebox, then savagely attacks a man who tries to flirt with her. At first, while this goes on, Mickey simply sits at the counter, reading a newspaper whose headline says he and Mallory have just killed six teen-agers at a slumber party.

Then he joins in, as Mr. Stone pumps up the music, switches film stock, lets the camera sway vertiginously, shows a bullet circling playfully toward the scared face of someone about to die, and so on. Grand flourish: when the spree is over, Mickey and Mallory dance together to "La Vie en Rose," with fireworks exploding romantically behind them. Mini-witticism: Mickey may have killed almost everyone in sight, but when he spoke to the waitress, he ordered nonfat milk.

Unfolding in only semi-linear fashion, "Natural Born Killers" devotes its first hour to Mickey and Mallory's rampage, interspersing lurid bloodshed with moments of eerie tenderness. (After the opening slaughter, these two find themselves in the moonlight, with a holy glow enveloping Mallory as she squats in the dirt and speaks about angels.) The couple's blood wedding, with an exchange of rattlesnake rings and Mallory's white veil drifting off into the abyss of a deep canyon, offers one of the film's most genuinely haunting visions, if only because it eludes easy understanding.

That's hardly the case with "American Maniacs," the tabloid television show starring Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.), who appreciates Mickey and Mallory for their entertainment value. At one of its funnier moments, the film dwells on the show's re-enactment of their exploits, with a title that says "A Dramatization" as two actors, playing Mickey and Mallory, shoot a bicyclist identified as an American bronze medalist. Finally persuading Mickey to sit for an interview after 50 killings in three weeks, Wayne asks the inevitable question: "Any regrets?"

As played by Mr. Downey with a thick Australian accent and perfect lip-smacking unctuousness, Wayne is one of the film's more deft inventions. But he, like everything else about "Natural Born Killers," is allowed to go overboard. After their operatic arrest in a ghastly, green-lit drugstore (another of Mr. Stone's genuinely disturbing images), Mickey and Mallory go to prison and are manipulated by a leering detective (Tom Sizemore) and a publicity-happy warden (Tommy Lee Jones). Even before it culminates in an actual riot, this section of the film becomes hysterical, to the point where it even features the rare out-of-control performance from Mr. Jones.

Mr. Harrelson and Ms. Lewis deal as captivatingly as they can with the film's wavering attitudes toward their characters. Both hit the requisite raw nerves, and both also make sense of the material's occasional romantic reveries. Used in a labored effort to give this story a spiritual dimension is Russell Means, as the only character in the film whose life means anything to Mickey and Mallory. Balthazar Getty is seen briefly as a young man who gets killed at a gas station, which probably qualifies as some kind of black joke.

Mr. Harrelson looks wild-eyed and deadly during parts of "Natural Born Killers," but he is at his scariest when serenely telling Wayne that he feels possessed of a certain purity. "I don't think I'm any scarier than you are," he says. "That's your shadow on the wall. You can't get rid of your shadow, can you, Wayne?" The point is made even more chillingly over the closing credits, as Leonard Cohen, a true poet of doom, sings succinctly: "Get ready for the future, it is murder."

Just before those credits roll, Mr. Stone shoots himself in the foot with a quick montage of tabloid television's latest, greatest hits: the Bobbitt and Menendez trials, Tonya Harding, O. J. Simpson. For better or worse, those are spectacles that cast a long shadow. And for all its surface passions, "Natural Born Killers" never digs deep enough to touch the madness of such events, or even to send them up in any surprising way. Mr. Stone's vision is impassioned, alarming, visually inventive, characteristically overpowering. But it's no match for the awful truth.

"Natural Born Killers" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes strong language, sexual situations and extreme, frequent violence, of the sort that could well have warranted a tougher rating. NATURAL BORN KILLERS Directed by Oliver Stone; written by David Veloz, Richard Rutowski and Mr. Stone, based on a story by Quentin Tarantino; director of photography, Robert Richardson; edited by Hank Corwin and Brian Berdan; production designer, Victor Kempster; produced by Jane Hamsher, Don Murphy and Clayton Townsend; released by Warner Brothers. Running time: 120 minutes. This film is rated R. WITH: Woody Harrelson (Mickey), Juliette Lewis (Mallory), Robert Downey Jr. (Wayne Gale), Tommy Lee Jones (Dwight McClusky), Tom Sizemore (Jack Scagnetti), Rodney Dangerfield (Mallory's father), Edie McClurg (Mallory's mother) and Russell Means (Old Indian).

Source: new York Times

You can view the Internet Movie Database trailer here

JUDICIAL SERVICE COMMISSION ACT 9 OF 1994

The purpose of the Judicial Services Commission Act is to regulate matters incidental to the establishment of the Judicial Service Commission by the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1993; and to provide for matters connected therewith.

Source: SABINET

Egypt Begins Crackdown on Strongest Opposition Group

After a series of raids and arrests that have weakened Islamic groups trying to topple the Government by force, Egyptian security forces have begun a crackdown against the country's most powerful opposition organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, which rejects violence.

The campaign, which includes the detention and interrogation of scores of Muslim Brotherhood leaders, signals a drive by the Government to curtail not only those movements that have carried out violent attacks, but also one that has come to dominate many municipalities, professional and labor associations and university faculties.

The confrontation pits the Government of President Hosni Mubarak for the first time against the intellectual authors of Islamic fundamentalism, who the President contends are merely terrorists. 'This Is the First Time'

"This is the first time this Government has linked us to terrorism," said Issam al-Irian, a senior Brotherhood leader, as he sat in a spartan office in central Cairo. "It is part of a wide move by the Government to curtail all forms of democratic participation. It is an expression of the Government's weakness. But by narrowing the opportunities for democratic participation, the Government is creating more problems that it is solving."

The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928, is the prototype for modern Islamic fundamentalist political parties throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Although it has been officially banned since 1954, with a membership estimated in the hundreds of thousands it is the largest Egyptian opposition movement -- legal or illegal -- and dominates many of the 14,000 private philanthropies that provide services from health clinics to primary schools.

Its assets, with backing from supporters here and in Persian Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Brotherhood, which has its headquarters in central Cairo, calls for the establishment of an Islamic state by peaceful means. It rejects the violence used by outlawed organizations like the Islamic Group in their efforts to topple the Government. Control of Civic Institutions

But at the same time, the Brotherhood has mounted an aggressive campaign to take control of a variety of civil and charitable institutions. It now dominates the largest of Egypt's 22 professional associations, including the medical, engineering and legal groups. And, aside from the rejection of the use of force, the goals of the Brotherhood dovetail with those of the underground groups.

The wide reach of the Brotherhood is based on its charitable work, including scores of clinics, hospitals and schools. But it also appeals to many Egyptians, especially those in the professional classes, as the only credible opposition movement.

"The Brotherhood, among the professional class, owes its support to the fact that it is an effective protest movement," said Said al-Naggar, the head of New Civic Forum, a liberal think tank. "It is the only outlet many people have to express dissatisfaction with the current system. Many of the professionals do not necessarily support the Islamic ideology, although there is a feeling that Western-style opposition parties, whether socialist or democratic, have failed."

But there is a price for effective organization. Women, for example, must wear the hejab, or head scarf, if they want to enter the Physicians' Union, a former leftist stronghold with a membership of 80,000 that is now controlled by the Brotherhood. Low-Cost Appliances

"The Brotherhood provides loans, cars, furniture and even electrical appliances to union members, at low cost," said Mohammed al-Farhat, who is not a member of the Brotherhood. "The union gives the physicians and their families the best quality health care at a minimal price. They have a reputation for being honest and careful with union funds." That reputation has wide appeal in a country whose Government is seen as thoroughly corrupt.

Until now, the Government concentrated its efforts on battling the Islamic Group, which has waged a two-year campaign of violence in which nearly 400 people, mainly police officers and militants, have been killed. But security forces have killed one militant commander and captured several others, putting the underground groups on the defensive.

"The security situation over all is much better now than a few months ago," a Western diplomat said. "This has made it easier to do this. The Government has the energy and the manpower available to go after what it sees as a second-tier organization."

But Brotherhood leaders say the Government wants to silence the only effective opposition in a country that nominally has a multiparty system, but where the same ruling group has been in power since 1952.

While refusing to lift the ban on the Brotherhood, President Mubarak has, until now, allowed it to operate. Brotherhood members were even permitted to run in parliamentary elections in 1988, although the candidates ran as members of the tiny Liberal and once-moribund Socialist Labor Party, both of which the Brotherhood now controls. Election Fraud Alleged

The main opposition parties, including the Socialist Labor Party, have boycotted subsequent parliamentary elections because of what they say is fraud. But the tolerance of the Brotherhood appears to have ended. For the first time, President Mubarak has begun referring to the group as a "terrorist" organization in public statements.

Government officials say documents discovered in February at the office of a company that had links to the Brotherhood directly tied the organization to violent groups.

They also say a defector from the underground armed movement detailed payments by Brotherhood supporters to armed factions.

And they have angrily criticized Brotherhood leaders for organizing a demonstration by hundreds of lawyers last month that turned violent. The demonstration was called to protest the death in police custody of a lawyer who defended jailed militants. Government critics and human rights groups say the lawyer, Abdel Harith Medani, was tortured to death. The Government denies the charge.

"The Brotherhood is a ring trying to agitate disturbances on the street," said Interior Minister Hassan al-Alfi. "And this is also what the terrorists and the murderers are doing with their explosions and assassinations." Spiritual Leader Questioned

The Government has taken a number of steps in its new campaign against the group. Hamed Aboul-Nasr, 81, the ailing spiritual leader of the Brotherhood, was called in for police questioning for two days this week, accused of writing anti-Government leaflets and inciting the lawyers' protest last month. Parliament has canceled the right of professors to elect the deans of university faculties, many of which are now dominated by the Brotherhood.

Mayors and village council members, many of whom belong to the Brotherhood, will be appointed by the Government rather than elected.

Brotherhood members, including most of the senior leaders around the country, have been arrested. A prominent clergyman was recently prevented from delivering a sermon to thousands of worshipers. And editors and reporters from Al Shaab, the paper of the Socialist Labor Party and a strong fundamentalist voice, have been hauled into court and imprisoned in recent weeks for articles critical of the Government.

The crackdown worries many who fear that if the Brotherhood leaders are driven underground or imprisoned, they could call on their followers to join the armed movements. Comparison to Algeria

"I never believed that the Brotherhood represented the moderate branch of the Islamic movement," said Hussein Ahmed Amin, Egypt's former Ambassador to Algeria and a prominent writer. "It was a matter of the distribution of roles. The Brotherhood preached a moderate line to get into Parliament and the Labor Party, which it came to dominate, as well as to appeal to those who wanted change, but deplored violence.

"But the origin of the trouble in Egypt is the same as in Algeria. The rise in militancy is caused by the failure to create a democratic system, by social and economic grievances, Government corruption, a lack of housing, unemployment, immigration from the rural areas to the cities and a lack of competing ideologies. The Islamic movement will not disappear with repression. And if the Government presses the Brotherhood too hard it could become more overtly radical and put all its energy into acts of terror."

Brotherhood leaders are not shy about echoing such a threat.

"If our supporters believe we cannot achieve our goals peacefully," said Mohammed Maamoun al-Hodaiby, the spokesman for the Brotherhood, "then they may turn to more radical means to achieve them.

"What do you expect?"

Source: New York Times

PUBLIC SERVICE ACT (PROCLOMATION 103 OF 1994)

The purpose of the Public Service Act is to provide for the organisation and administration of the public service of the Republic, the regulation of the conditions of employment, terms of office, discipline, retirement and discharge of members of the public service, and matters connected therewith.

Source: SABINET

Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Amendment Act, No. 2 of 1994

To introduce a new Constitution for the Republic of South Africa and to provide for matters incidental thereto.

A copy of the interim constitution can be found here.

Source: Constitutional Court of South Africa

The Freedom Charter

The Freedom Charter is a statement of core principles of the South African Congress Alliance, which consisted of the African National Congress and its allies the South African Indian Congress, the South African Congress of Democrats and the Coloured People's Congress. Here is the text of the Freedom Charter adopted at the Congress of the People, Kliptown, on 26 June 1955.

The charter calls for democracy and human rights, land reform, labour rights, and nationalization. The South African government denounced the congress as treason and banned the ANC. However, the charter continued to circulate in the revolutionary underground and inspired a new generation of young militants in the 1980s.

1. We, the People of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know:

1.1. that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people;
1.2. that our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and peace by a form of government founded on injustice and inequality;
1.3. that our country will never be prosperous or free until all our people live in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities;
1.4. that only a democratic state, based on the will of all the people, can secure to all their birthright without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief;

And therefore, we, the people of South Africa, black and white together equals, countrymen and brothers adopt this Freedom Charter; And we pledge ourselves to strive together, sparing neither strength nor courage, until the democratic changes here set out have been won.

2. The People Shall Govern!

Every man and woman shall have the right to vote for and to stand as a candidate for all bodies which make laws;

2.1. All people shall be entitled to take part in the administration of the country;
2.2. The rights of the people shall be the same, regardless of race, colour or sex;
2.3. All bodies of minority rule, advisory boards, councils and authorities shall be replaced by democratic organs of self-government .

3. All National Groups Shall have Equal Rights!

3.1. There shall be equal status in the bodies of state, in the courts and in the schools for all national groups and races;
3.2. All people shall have equal right to use their own languages, and to develop their own folk culture and customs;
3.3. All national groups shall be protected by law against insults to their race and national pride;
3.4. The preaching and practice of national, race or colour discrimination and contempt shall be a punishable crime;
3.5. All apartheid laws and practices shall be set aside.

4. The People Shall Share in the Country's Wealth!

4.1. The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people;
4.2. The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the Banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole;
4.3. All other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the wellbeing of the people;
4.4. All people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions.

5. The Land Shall be Shared Among Those Who Work It!

5.1. Restrictions of land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended, and all the land re-divided amongst those who work it to banish famine and land hunger;
5.2. The state shall help the peasants with implements, seed, tractors and dams to save the soil and assist the tillers;
5.3. Freedom of movement shall be guaranteed to all who work on the land;
5.4. All shall have the right to occupy land wherever they choose;
5.5. People shall not be robbed of their cattle, and forced labour and farm prisons shall be abolished.

6. All Shall be Equal Before the Law!

6.1. No-one shall be imprisoned, deported or restricted without a fair trial; No-one shall be condemned by the order of any Government official;
6.2. The courts shall be representative of all the people;
6.3. Imprisonment shall be only for serious crimes against the people, and shall aim at re-education, not vengeance;
6.4. The police force and army shall be open to all on an equal basis and shall be the helpers and protectors of the people;
6.5. All laws which discriminate on grounds of race, colour or belief shall be repealed.

7. All Shall Enjoy Equal Human Rights!

7.1. The law shall guarantee to all their right to speak, to organise, to meet together, to publish, to preach, to worship and to educate their children;
7.2. The privacy of the house from police raids shall be protected by law;
7.3. All shall be free to travel without restriction from countryside to town, from province to province, and from South Africa abroad;
7.4. Pass Laws, permits and all other laws restricting these freedoms shall be abolished.

8. There Shall be Work and Security!

8.1. All who work shall be free to form trade unions, to elect their officers and to make wage agreements with their employers;
8.2. The state shall recognise the right and duty of all to work, and to draw full unemployment benefits;
8.3. Men and women of all races shall receive equal pay for equal work;
8.4. There shall be a forty-hour working week, a national minimum wage, paid annual leave, and sick leave for all workers, and maternity leave on full pay for all working mothers;
8.5. Miners, domestic workers, farm workers and civil servants shall have the same rights as all others who work;
8.6. Child labour, compound labour, the tot system and contract labour shall be abolished.

9. The Doors of Learning and Culture Shall be Opened!

9.1. The government shall discover, develop and encourage national talent for the enhancement of our cultural life;
9.2. All the cultural treasures of mankind shall be open to all, by free exchange of books, ideas and contact with other lands;
9.3. The aim of education shall be to teach the youth to love their people and their culture, to honour human brotherhood, liberty and peace;
9.4. Education shall be free, compulsory, universal and equal for all children; Higher education and technical training shall be opened to all by means of state allowances and scholarships awarded on the basis of merit;
9.5. Adult illiteracy shall be ended by a mass state education plan;
9.6. Teachers shall have all the rights of other citizens;
9.7. The colour bar in cultural life, in sport and in education shall be abolished.

10. There Shall be Houses, Security and Comfort!

10.1. All people shall have the right to live where they choose, be decently housed, and to bring up their families in comfort and security;
10.2. Unused housing space to be made available to the people;
10.3. Rent and prices shall be lowered, food plentiful and no-one shall go hungry;
10.4. A preventive health scheme shall be run by the state;
10.5. Free medical care and hospitalisation shall be provided for all, with special care for mothers and young children;
10.6. Slums shall be demolished, and new suburbs built where all have transport, roads, lighting, playing fields, creches and social centres;
10.7. The aged, the orphans, the disabled and the sick shall be cared for by the state;
10.8. Rest, leisure and recreation shall be the right of all:
10.9. Fenced locations and ghettoes shall be abolished, and laws which break up families shall be repealed.

11. There Shall be Peace and Friendship!

11.1. South Africa shall be a fully independent state which respects the rights and sovereignty of all nations;
11.2. South Africa shall strive to maintain world peace and the settlement of all international disputes by negotiation - not war;
11.3. Peace and friendship amongst all our people shall be secured by upholding the equal rights, opportunities and status of all;
11.4. The people of the protectorates Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland shall be free to decide for themselves their own future;
11.5. The right of all peoples of Africa to independence and self-government shall be recognised, and shall be the basis of close co-operation.

12. Let all people who love their people and their country now say, as we say here:

THESE FREEDOMS WE WILL FIGHT FOR, SIDE BY SIDE, THROUGHOUT OUR LIVES, UNTIL WE HAVE WON OUR LIBERTY

Source: ANC

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