[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 140 (Friday, September 30, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 30, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
QUESTIONS RAISED ON ARISTIDE'S VIOLENT PAST AND TALBOTT'S TESTIMONY ON 
                             CAPUTO'S MEMOS

  (Mr. SMITH of New Jersey asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, several crucial questions 
remain unanswered about the explosive situation in Haiti.
  One, is President Aristide sufficiently fit for office to justify the 
risking of American soldiers' lives to force his return to power?
  While it was one thing to broker a peaceful diplomatic return of a 
duly elected President, it is quite another to risk American lives to 
effectuate that return.
  Knowing of the serious charges against Mr. Aristide regarding his 
support of violence, I asked him yesterday in a Foreign Affairs 
Committee meeting if he has ever supported violence in general, or 
necklacing in particular.
  Necklacing is a barbaric practice of assassination where the victim 
is bound, his arms tied or hacked off and a gasoline-filled tire put 
around his neck and ignited. In Haiti, necklacing is called Pere lebrun 
(Father Lebrun), the name of a popular Haitian tire dealer.
  President Aristide said, ``I did not, am not and will never embrace 
necklacing.''
  Mr. Aristide's speeches and credible evidence suggest the opposite. 
For example, Mr. Aristide was ejected from the Salesian Order of the 
Catholic Church in 1988 for ``incitement to hatred and violence * * *''
  In an address at the National Palace on September 27, 1991, President 
Aristide said about necklacing:

       What a nice tool! What a nice instrument! What a nice 
     device! It is a pretty one. It is elegant, attractive, 
     splendorous, graceful, and dazzling. It smells good. Wherever 
     you go, you feel like smelling it. It is provided for by the 
     Constitution, which bans macoutes from the political scene * 
     * *

  President Aristide said yesterday that he saw the translation, and it 
was bad.
  Maybe.
  The bottom line remains, with American lives at risk, we absolutely 
need to know the truth.
  Another pertinent question remains as to whether politics and the 
November elections had anything whatsoever to do with the United States 
invasion of Haiti and the timing of that operation.
  Earlier this week at a Foreign Affairs hearing, I asked Deputy 
Secretary of State Strobe Talbott this question and exactly what U.N. 
Envoy to Haiti Dante Caputo meant in a confidential memo that 
represented the United States position on Haiti ``as a test case for 
which the United States has to have found a solution before November?''
  Mr. Caputo, a former Argentinean foreign minister, also wrote in a 
memo to U.N. Secretary General Boutros-Ghali on May 23, that ``the 
Americans see in this type of action a chance to show, after the strong 
media criticism of the administration, the President's decisionmaking 
capability and firmness of leadership in international political 
matters,'' and pointed out that a U.S. armed deployment was 
``politically desirable'' and that ``the current opposition of public 
opinion to an armed invasion will change radically once it has taken 
place.''
  The credibility of these statements are of particular value when one 
recalls that it was Mr. Caputo who brokered the Governor's Island 
Agreement between General Cedras and President Aristide. Sadly, in 
protest of the United States invasion, Mr. Caputo resigned as U.N. 
Envoy to Haiti hours after the invasion.
  Mr. Talbott, for his part, denied under oath before our committee on 
Tuesday, ever referring to November in those conversations or that 
politics had anything to do with the decision to invade Haiti.
  But Americans have a right to know if the November elections--and Mr. 
Clinton's own political fortunes--had anything whatsoever to do with 
his decision to invade. Did Mr. Caputo dream all this up?
  Were politics ever discussed in any way at the White House in 
relation to the invasion?
  Mr. Talbott says no. His denial, however, raises more questions than 
it answers. And I strongly believe that he and other high-level Clinton 
administration leaders need to be questioned under oath to determine 
whether or not American lives have been put at risk for political 
reasons. For now, the jury is out and Americans have a right to know 
the answer.

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