U.S. Sets Plans to Protect Force Sent to Haiti

WASHINGTON —  The Clinton Administration has developed contingency plans to protect and, if necessary, to evacuate Americans and allied personnel from Haiti if the impoverished land’s anti-democracy forces attack a U.N.-sponsored peacekeeping contingent, a senior official said Friday.

The official said the Pentagon will ensure there are adequate, combat-ready forces in easy striking distance of Haiti to defend the 600 American military personnel who will begin arriving there Monday to prepare the way for the return of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The Americans--300 military engineers assigned to work on roads, schools and other parts of Haiti’s crumbling infrastructure; 100 instructors to help retrain the Haitian armed forces, and 200 support personnel--will be part of a larger U.N.-sponsored peacekeeping force. It also plans to monitor compliance with human rights and to retrain the country’s frequently brutal police force.

The measures will include having an amphibious loading vessel “hover on the horizon” off the Haitian coast for an extended time for potential rescue duties, officials said.

Although the peacekeepers will carry side-arms for personal protection, they have no mandate to engage in combat. “If there is any shooting, we’re out of there,” a senior Pentagon official said Friday.

At a White House meeting last Saturday, Defense Secretary Les Aspin questioned the wisdom of sending Americans into a potentially hostile situation, officials said.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher defended the use of American troops in support of an agreement, signed July 3 on Governors Island in New York Harbor, which is designed to allow Aristide, the only freely elected president in recent Haitian history, to regain on Oct. 30 the office that he lost in a bloody coup in September, 1991.

President Clinton resolved the dispute by concluding that restoration of democracy in Haiti was in the United States’ national interest, in part because authorities in this country hope to avert any further exodus of Haitians to America’s shores, an official said. But he also authorized the Pentagon to increase the level of protection afforded the peacekeepers.

On Friday, both State Department and Pentagon officials sought to minimize the friction between them.

State Department spokesman Mike McCurry said reports of disagreement were “exaggerated.” A senior Pentagon official said he was “very comfortable” with current plans to send the Americans to Haiti.

On the surface, the Haiti deployment looks like a miniature version of the troubled American mission in Somalia. For one thing, the U.N. force in Haiti is designed to support a basic change in the way the country is governed. And, as in Somalia, a ruthless, well-armed force is determined to thwart U.N. plans by any means available, including murder.

In recent weeks, Haitian gunmen, including members of the military police, have committed a raft of political killings, according to U.N. mediator Dante Caputo.

But American officials believe that the Haitian gunmen are unlikely to target foreigners.

One official said the American troops “are not going out to do search-and-seizure missions.” He added, “If they become targets, we will re-evaluate the mission.”

According to Caputo and Aristide’s backers in the United States, the military government of Lt. Gen. Raul Cedras and the Port-au-Prince police chief, Michel-Joseph Francois, are responsible for a growing number of murders and other human rights abuses since the Governors Island agreement was reached.

Cedras signed the pact in July because a U.N.-ordered economic embargo had made Haiti ungovernable. But the army and its wealthy civilian supporters hope to block Aristide’s return or, failing that, prevent him from governing.

The army and its backers hate and fear Aristide, a populist Roman Catholic priest who enjoys overwhelming support among Haiti’s poor majority.

The State Department’s McCurry said the dispatch of American troops meets the three conditions set out by the Administration for peacekeeping operations. It has a firm time limit, of six months, and a clear military mission, and it is in the national interest.

“The military mission, I think, has been very well defined,” he said. “ . . . We have very strong (national) interest . . . in the successful restoration of democracy in Haiti, not the least of which is to avert another exodus of boat people coming to our shores.”