Invasion on Hold

By Bruce W. Nelan

In the White House basement's Situation Room last week, a dozen or so of Bill Clinton's senior foreign policy and defense officials were supposed to be planning the invasion of Haiti -- but quickly fell to bickering. The policymakers clashed over setting a deadline for the junta to step down, after which an invasion would be launched. Defense Secretary William Perry was vociferously opposed: he was certain a deadline, even a secret one, would leak -- forcing the U.S. to invade. "They always want us to knock heads," says a Pentagon official, referring to the State Department, "because they see 15 other troublemakers around the world who they hope will get the message."

Perry also argued that the Administration should allow more time for sanctions, threats and what Pentagon officials coyly called "inducements" to persuade the Haitian military leaders that they have to leave. While the officials insisted cash payoffs are not on the table, there has been back-room talk of providing the Haitian military leaders with safe passage to comfortable lives in exile.

Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott was vocal too -- more so than his boss, Warren Christopher -- in insisting that the time for negotiations had passed. It would be morally distasteful, Talbott declared, to help set up the junta's leaders outside Haiti. Perry countered that Talbott's inflexibility represented a peculiar morality. The U.S., he said, should explore all peaceful alternatives before risking American lives and hundreds of millions of dollars to oust Haiti's bosses.

A Pentagon official dismissed the session as a "gentlemen's spat." But the divisions are real, split along lines that became all too familiar during the Reagan and Bush Administrations: a hawkish State Department urging military action and a cautious Pentagon holding out for more diplomacy. Not surprisingly, press reports of the should-we-or-shouldn't-we debate left Haiti's obdurate rulers more skeptical than ever that Clinton would force them out.

When the President next focuses on his Haiti problem, he will be faced with some basic decisions. Should he set a deadline, public or private, for Lieut. General Raoul Cedras and his cronies to step down? Should he send a special envoy to Port-au-Prince to issue an ultimatum? Now that the U.N. has given its blessing to the use of "all necessary means" to restore Haiti's popularly elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power, should Clinton ask Congress for its support -- and could he get it? Most important, Clinton must decide whether an invasion is a good idea at all, even as the last resort he labels it.

At his news conference Wednesday night, the President said the U.N. action signaled that "we should keep on the table the option of forcibly removing the dictators who have usurped power in Haiti." He went on to define the national interest in terms of a million Haitian Americans living in the U.S. and "an interest in stabilizing those democracies that are in our hemisphere." By any traditional measure, such interests are not vital to national security, and Americans are -- so far -- largely unconvinced. A TIME/ CNN poll last week asked if the U.S. should send troops to oust Haiti's military rulers. Only 31% of Americans supported the idea; 61% opposed it.

If he does send in a military force, Clinton insists it will be a multinational operation backed by the U.N. In practice a multilateral force for Haiti would have to be drawn from other Caribbean and Latin American states -- all of which have responded with varying degrees of reluctance because of their historic opposition to military interventions, especially by the U.S. Only Argentina agreed to contribute troops, but quickly began dithering after domestic opposition erupted.

Cedras and his cronies responded to the threats last week with a show of defiance noteworthy even for them: a declaration of a state of siege, an attempted political assassination, a brutal assault on Haitians waiting in line to apply for political asylum in the U.S. and a threat to close down local press organizations that report "alarmist news." They finished the week by ordering their Justice Ministry to prepare a case charging Aristide , with treason for supporting foreign intervention to restore him to power.

Despite the regime's show of intransigence, officials at the U.S. embassy claim the sanctions and trade embargo are creating a "sense of rising frustration" in Haiti. But there is contrary evidence that the outside pressure is forcing the business elite to seek common cause with the military. The Chamber of Commerce in the capital has begun hanging banners of support for the junta across many main streets.

While sanctions are hurting the poor, who survive on beans and rice, shops in Port-au-Prince were well stocked. Cement supplies began to run out and so did Kellogg's Corn Flakes, but well-to-do supporters of the junta boasted they could outlast Clinton. Local supermarket owners said they had enough stock in warehouses for at least three months. "The prices are higher," says a Haitian executive, "but I can still get everything I need." (Last week, however, gasoline prices shot up abruptly.)

The word bluff, spelled bluf, has now entered the Creole language. Cedras thinks he can outbluff Clinton. He will play for time, negotiate with anyone who comes along, and point to the delay to convince his followers that the U.S. is not really coming. So far, he is succeeding. Invasion fears are fading, and many of Haiti's wealthy backers of the 1991 military coup against Aristide have begun their August vacations in the cool mountain valleys. In Washington Clinton's advisers seemed no closer to a decision, and most will be heading off for their vacations as well.

With reporting by Edward Barnes/Port-au-Prince, Ann M. Simmons and Mark Thompson/Washington