Rightly fearing a repeat of John F. Kennedy’s Cuban fiasco, the White House quickly shot down the proposal for an emigre invasion of Haiti, sources said. But short of U.S. military intervention, Washington was running out of options. The latest trade embargo on Haiti proved to be almost comically ineffective. The country’s exiled president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, still refused to compromise with the generals who deposed him. Desperate Haitians continued to flee the island in rickety boats. Lobbyist Randall Robinson, whose hunger strike on behalf of the Haitians helped paint Bill Clinton into a corner, accused Washington of doing as little as possible for the boat people. ““I do not know,’’ he said, ““whether the administration is crippled by a lack of will or massive ineptness or a combination of the two.''
The tough new sanctions imposed by the United Nations two weeks ago hadn’t yet had any visible effect on the junta led by Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras. Blockade-runners slipped past U.S. warships, ignoring desultory gunfire. Smuggled goods poured into Haiti from the Dominican Republic, its neighbor on the island of Hispaniola. When U.S. Ambassador to Haiti William L. Swing visited a border crossing, the traffic in illegal gasoline barely paused in acknowledgment of his presence.
Clinton’s special envoy, William Gray III, extracted a promise from Dominican President Joaquin Balaguer that he would seal the frontier. Balaguer also said he would allow United Nations inspectors to patrol the border along with his own forces, using helicopters and vehicles provided by the United States. But Balaguer has long been a foe of Aristide and a friend to the Haitian military. With officers on both sides of the border piling up fortunes from smuggling, it wasn’t clear that he could make good on his promise.
Diplomats estimated that the Haitians had stockpiled about four months’ worth of imported goods, along with a one-month supply of fuel. Seasonal rains refilled Port-au-Prince’s main hydroelectric reservoir, improving electrical service. The Cedras regime seemed far from intimidated; last week four Aristide supporters were murdered in the capital, and the body of one victim was dumped near the U.S. Embassy.
Clinton intends to deal with the boat people by setting up Caribbean processing centers where their claims for political asylum can be heard. One possibility was a British colony, the thinly populated Turks and Caicos Islands, which would benefit immensely from U.S. aid. Jamaica also was ““seriously considering’’ a U.S. proposal, according to a Jamaican diplomat; Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott will visit this week to press Washington’s case.
The administration also wants to stop commercial airline flights to Haiti. There isn’t much else Clinton can do right now, apart from jawboning the Haitian regime with threats of intervention and warnings about seizing the U.S. assets of Cedras supporters. Eventually, Washington might have to make good on its military bluff. But Aristide’s term expires next year, and Clinton appears to be playing for time, going slowly through the motions of a halfhearted crackdown.
