Bush Warns Haitians Against Fleeing to U.S.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush warned Haitians on Wednesday against trying to flee to the United States and said he would support an international security force but only once a political deal was reached between Haiti's embattled government and advancing rebels.

Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has appealed for international help for his outgunned police, but Bush was insistent that peacekeepers only be sent once a political settlement was reached.

The United States has been criticized for doing too little to staunch the chaos in the poorest nation in the Americas. U.S. officials have emphasized negotiation and said security forces should be sent only after violence abates. Critics fear waiting for a peace deal will allow more chaos.

"Incident to a political settlement, we will encourage the international community to provide a security presence," Bush told reporters.

He said such a force was being discussed with U.S. allies, but gave no details. The first item of business, he said, "is to work on a political solution."

Canada, a key U.S. ally in the crisis, has said it would be "madness" to send reinforcements now because of the violence, while France has been noncommittal.

Hopes for a political settlement soon are in doubt because opposition politicians rejected a power-sharing deal on Tuesday that Aristide had already agreed on. "We still hope to be able to achieve a political settlement between the current government and the rebels," Bush said.

Speaking in the White House Oval Office, he also said he had instructed the U.S. Coast Guard to "turn back any refugee" from Haiti who seeks to land on U.S. shores.

Aristide had said on Tuesday that "we may have more Haitians leaving by boat to Florida," apparently trying to touch on U.S. fears of a repeat of the early 1990s when thousands of Haitians fled political violence and tried to reach America.

"We will have a robust presence with an effective strategy. and so we strongly encourage the Haitian people to stay home as we work to effect a peaceful solution to this problem," Bush said.

There appeared to be little sympathy in the U.S. Congress to send in U.S. troops to keep Aristide from falling.

"What the United States does not want to do is to simply prop up the status quo in an anti-democratic government led by Mr. Aristide...What the United States wants to see in Haiti is all of the political parties continuing in a profound and serious dialogue," said Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican.

Florida Republican Rep. Mark Foley said the countries involved in trying to arrange a deal were saying behind the scenes that "we will not send people to that nation if it is under the intention of propping up Aristide's government."

He said the United States would be a part of or lend support to an eventual multilateral force.

Washington believes it still has time to hammer out a peace deal with the Haiti opposition despite its rejection of a U.S.-backed power-sharing plan, and despite the pressure rebels are exerting by vowing to attack the capital Port-Au-Prince, State Department officials said

I was on a honeymoon cruise last week, and the ship that docked a day early in Cozumel next to us had to skip Haiti as one of their stop-overs. Ran into another couple that said it was because of a civil war that just started.

Since CNN World was the only news I could get, all I heard was that the 'rebels' threw machine guns into the streets and now 'the people' are all armed. I couldn't tell if it was CNN's usual spin because I had no Fox News to turn on.

Since I am not familiar with Hatian politics, can someone tell me if Aristide is on the level or not?

Stern forum

ONCE AGAIN HAITIAN PRESIDENT JOHN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE may be ousted by his citizens, who began a new rebellion against his tyrannical rule on February 5.

After Aristide was removed by a military coup in 1991, President Bill Clinton in 1994 sent 20,000 U.S. troops to Haiti to restore to power this former Roman Catholic Priest who once called Cuban dictator Fidel Castro his "greatest personal hero."

Aristide endorsed "necklacing" of the kind widely practiced in South Africa by Winnie Mandela. It consists of seizing a victim, forcing an automobile tire filled with gasoline down over their head and shoulders, and then setting the tire and gasoline on fire.

"What a beautiful tool!¿ It smells good. And wherever you go, you want to smell it," Aristide said of the necklacing of his critics on September 27, 1991, as witnessed and reported by Associated Press.

Note the above date. Despite knowing of Aristide¿s penchant for necklacing critics, and despite knowing that a CIA psychological profile had identified Aristide as "a psychopath," Clinton three years later put at risk 20,000 of America¿s most elite troops to remove the Haitian government in order to re-install this murdering psychopath Jean-Bertrand Aristide as President of Haiti.

Earlier in 1995, the defrocked priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide formally renounced his Roman Catholic faith and publicly announced that he was returning to the Voodoo faith of his ancestors.

In July 1995 Aristide held a Voodoo Congress at Haiti¿s National Palace. The 300 attendees included sorcerers and "bocors" (those who practice black magic), wrote Ruth, "including leaders of the dreaded ¿Bizango Cult,¿ which practices zombification and human sacrifice."

[Scientists have documented the use of poison from the Caribbean puffer fish by Haitian witch doctors as a way to simulate death and then, in smaller doses, to turn victims dug up from their graves into the "living dead," called zombies in Haiti¿s Voodoo tradition.]

Voodoo, Aristide said in his speech to congress attendees, is one of the "great religions of the world alongside Christianity, Islam and Judaism." He announced the funding of a national Voodoo temple, doubtless to be built with U.S. taxpayer aid dollars via the Clinton Administration.

One of Aristide¿s later objectives would be the shipping of Haitians to the United States, especially to Florida shores 600 miles away where they could embarrass the state¿s Republicans. Senator John F. Kerry (D.-Mass.) might have shared Aristide¿s motives when, in 1998, he co-sponsored a bill that resulted in amnesty for an estimated 125,000 Haitians who had been given "temporary asylum" before 1996 because they were fleeing the chaos, terror and poverty caused largely by Aristide.

In the United States, meanwhile, President Bill Clinton ordered the U.S. military to begin including witchcraft pagan chaplains to minister to the religious needs of our troops. Hillary Clinton, as observed by FBI agents, decorated her upstairs Christmas tree one year with sex and drug paraphernalia. She pressed the Postal Service to discontinue issuing Madonna and Child stamps around Christmastime.

Dominican military dispatches 3,000 troops to border with Haiti

Dominican Republic - The government doubled its military presence at the border with Haiti to 3,000 as the neighboring country remained in the grip of a bloody rebellion, the country's top military official said Tuesday.
Gen. Jose Miguel Soto Jimenez said that the deployment of 1,500 additional troops represents only a small percentage of what the Caribbean country's military is capable of sending to the border in the event of a refugee crisis.
"The hypothesis of a mass exodus is something we consider plausible, but we think that won't happen," Soto said.
The contingent was dispatched Sunday and Monday to provide more security along the 225-mile (362-kilometer) border, said military spokesman Col. Juan Julio Tejeda

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