[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 25 (Tuesday, March 2, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E269]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             HOPE IN HAITI

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. DOUG BEREUTER

                              of nebraska

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, March 2, 2004

  Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, this Member wishes to call the attention 
of his colleagues to the excellent editorial on Haiti in the March 2, 
2004, edition of the Omaha World-Herald. The Bush administration has 
responded properly to the crisis in Haiti. The citizens of that 
desperately poor country have suffered greatly under the regime of the 
autocratic and quixotic Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Now he is finally gone 
and good riddance. The international community under the leadership of 
the United Nations needs to be fully engaged in bringing peace and 
stability to this terribly troubled country so that the livelihood of 
its people can begin to receive the necessary attention.

              [From the Omaha World-Herald, Mar. 2, 2004]

                            Haiti's New Hope

       The Bush administration has had sharp foreign policy 
     disagreements with other countries. But in responding to the 
     political collapse in Haiti, the international community is 
     in general consensus. For Haiti to move forward, it's widely 
     agreed that the country's president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, 
     had to go.
       That is a reasonable stance. Aristide is a former priest 
     reinstalled in 1994 by a U.S. military campaign as the duly 
     elected president. But during the past decade, he amassed a 
     record of shamelessly backtracking on his promises to uphold 
     democracy.
       He even copied the fascistic tactics of Haiti's old-time 
     dictator, ``Papa Doc'' Duvalier, using gangs of thugs to 
     intimidate and murder members of the political opposition. 
     Four years ago, such tactics spurred the Clinton 
     administration to end all aid to Haiti except for 
     humanitarian assistance. The foul tactics also led the United 
     Nations to refuse to recognize the validity of the country's 
     tainted Senate elections. In 2000, Aristide was elected 
     president in a contest boycotted in protest by the political 
     opposition.
       Bush's Democratic critics are arguing that the 
     administration should have sent in U.S. Marines last week to 
     buttress Aristide. But Bush's refusal to maintain Aristide in 
     power had the support of leading players such as France and 
     Canada (whose governments were at loggerheads with Bush over 
     the Iraq war last year).
       It was the political opposition in Haiti that may well have 
     made the key decision leading to Aristide's downfall. Last 
     week the United States headed a multilateral diplomatic 
     effort that was poised to force Aristide to agree to accept a 
     politically independent prime minister. But opposition 
     leaders balked at the proposal, saying Aristide couldn't be 
     trusted.
       Now Aristide has fled to a safe haven in Africa 
     (facilitated by the efforts of U.S. Secretary of State Colin 
     Powell to find him a host country), and U.S. Marines are 
     arriving in Haiti to provide order. Up to around 1,000 
     American troops will ultimately be placed there, with a large 
     contingent serving as gendarmes, Powell says.
       A multinational security force, approved Sunday night by 
     the United Nations Security Council, is also in the works.
       Prospects for a politically stable Haiti (which this year 
     marks the 200th anniversary of its successful revolt against 
     French rule) are unclear. Armed bands, seemingly tethered 
     only to an agenda of plundering and vendetta-settling, have 
     proliferated. The gap between the country's rich and poor 
     feeds tremendous resentments. The large amounts of aid that 
     the Clinton administration pumped into Haiti in the 1990s for 
     police training and economic development appear to have done 
     little good.
       Nonetheless, the end of Aristide's regime provides 
     encouragement. Particularly welcome is the widespread support 
     from abroad that Haiti enjoys as it attempts to pull itself 
     away from the injustice and brutality of the past.
       For all the problems their country faces, the Haitian 
     people can count on the support of the United States and many 
     other countries in the effort to make the fall of Haiti's 
     latest dictator the turning point it can be to a better 
     future. In that, there can be great hope.

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