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in the President's office. Simply wouldn't get anywhere near the Department of State. These people are scum. (snip) The Bush Administration has been content to slowly strangle Haiti's economy by maintaining an international aid embargo against the country, an embargo that former Senator Jesse Helms helped initiate in the final months of the Clinton Administration.
Rightwing ideologues in the Bush Administration have done all they can to undermine Aristide. The Latin America team features Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, his deputy Daniel Fisk, and White House adviser Otto Reich. All three "were protégés of ex-Senator Helms," notes the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. "It was this group of zealots and hardliners who, off the record, let it be known to all concerned that the Bush Administration would countenance regime change in Haiti."
Secretary of State Colin Powell has been playing good cop to these bad cops, as Bill Fletcher of TransAfrica has noted. Powell recently said that the "elected president" should not be "forced out of office by thugs."
(snip)
The opposition forces include some of the people who participated in the coup in 1991 and others who committed brutal atrocities during the junta's rule. While Aristide has accepted the need to compromise and has even offered to share power, they have not, though they have but 20 percent support in the country, according to the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.
(snip/...) http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-06.htm~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Anyone who isn't aware of Jesse Helms obsesssion with forcing every square inch of the Western Hempisphere to serve the most right wing elements of this country simply hasn't been doing his/her homework. You really hate to see people coming into message boards with absolutely no grasp of what has happened in Latin American and Caribbean history at the hands of a lunatic fringe in the U.S. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(snip) "I challenge the Department of State to find out about this man (Mr. Apaid)," Congressional Black Caucus member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) told reporters on Capitol Hill Feb. 11. "Why do we have someone in Haiti that holds an American passport, owning factories in Haiti, triggering a coup d’etat, and leading the so-called opposition to a democratically elected president?
"Andre Apaid is ferociously adamant about forcing Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the first democratically-elected president in the history of Haiti, out of office," Rep. Waters said, just two days after returning from her second visit to the country this year.
Despite official assurances that the U.S., Canada and other Caribbean countries are against forcing Mr. Aristide from office before his term is scheduled to end in Feb. 2006, the U.S. government may be "winking and nodding" signals to the opposition to continue its efforts to overthrow the government, she said.
(snip)
"(Mr. Noriega) hates Haiti. He’s been a part of that shadow hand and group in the Congress of the United States that has been working against Haiti for years. Mr. Noriega put out a press statement that blamed the government for the recent crisis that was initiated by the thugs and the opposition up in Gonaives where the so-called rioting is taking place," Rep. Waters continued.
"The protests he organizes have become increasingly violent. Police officers are confronted, property is damaged, and roads are blocked. It is my belief that Andre Apaid is attempting to instigate a bloodbath in Haiti and then blame the government for the resulting disaster, in the belief that the United States will aid the so-called protestors against President Aristide and his government," she said.
(snip) http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_1308.shtml~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(snip) • The State Department under Secretary of State Powell and his Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega, at first appears to have remained inactive over Haiti, which is in itself a policy. Rather than rushing down anti-riot equipment to Port-Au-Prince, as it repeatedly has done in other cases where constitutional governments are being threatened by street mobs, U.S. officials have sat on their hands waiting for a successful coup scenario to unfold. Meanwhile, rather than seek to trigger a process in the OAS to pacify the burgeoning threat to the Aristide government, and most of all, lift the U.S. imposed freeze on hundreds of millions of dollars in aid pledged to Port-Au-Prince (which has economically asphyxiated the island), Noriega and his department stall for time and await some new incident in which the Aristide government is further undermined and discredited. Meanwhile, the opposition groups, which have long been funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, through the International Republican Institute, and coddled by hardliner Republican policymakers, seek to preserve the legacy of longtime Aristide-hater, former Senator Jesse Helms.
• Given the opposition’s heavy dependence on U.S. support, an open and specific denunciation of their obstructionist tactics by the Bush administration could immediately force the Democratic Convergence and Group 184 to abandon their attempts to overthrow the Aristide government by intimidation, threats and street violence. Refusing to force them to turn to negotiation, the administration has not uttered even a weak acknowledgment of the latter’s culpability in the deteriorating situation in Haiti. Instead, it covertly works for Aristide’s resignation, which in fact is Washington’s very policy, as it acknowledges that it is preparing to house upwards of 15,000 Haitian boat people after they are interdicted on their way to Florida.
(snip)
Meanwhile, the Bush administration has coolly signaled its passivity if not acquiescence regarding the effort of this non-representative cabal to oust President Aristide, who was popularly elected in what was only the third free election in Haiti’s history. The State Department, with practiced diplomatic obfuscation, has stated that “we recognize that reaching a political settlement will require some fairly thorough changes in the way Haiti is governed.” A State Department official later clarified this statement by noting that this “could indeed involve changes in Aristide’s position.” Thus, while President Bush and his would-be kingmakers in the bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs tout their efforts to build democracy abroad, the president’s Latin American team headed by the State Department’s Roger Noriega and Dan Fisk, along with the White House’s Otto Reich, all but openly support the unseating of an Aristide government. These actions are a clear signal that the most flagrant excesses of Cold War policy towards the hemisphere are still being nurtured in Washington by those who emotionally need some leftist figure to bash, even if such a person poses no threat to this country’s national interests.
(snip)
Yet no such call has been forthcoming; on the contrary, the State Department is subtlety supporting the opposition’s attempts to undemocratically oust President Aristide in a scenario of “regime change” that must by now be quite familiar to Secretary of State Colin Powell. The reasons for Washington’s openly anti-Aristide policy are not hard to discern. U.S. foreign policy towards Latin America remains in the hands of a small group of hardline policymakers led by Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega and Special Presidential Envoy Otto Reich, the ideological heirs to former Senator Jesse Helms, who is said to have never met a right-wing Latin American dictator he didn’t like. Conversely, he also had little affection for democratically-elected presidents, among which was his nemesis Aristide, who he considered to be the next Castro of the Caribbean. These Washington extremists have had no interest in ensuring that Aristide serves out his constitutionally mandated tenure; on the contrary, they are no doubt eager to see him go, and hence quite content to let the opposition continue to wreak havoc without meddlesome interference from the Washington other than a stream of pro-forma statements about how troubled the White House is by the violence in Haiti, but unaccompanied by desperately needed anti-riot equipment shipments to Port-Au-Prince.
(snip) http://www.coha.org/NEW_PRESS_RELEASES/New_Press_Releases_2004/04.07_Haiti_Waiting.htm~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(snip) The Bush administration is contributing to misery in Haiti by blocking the disbursement of some $500 million in international development aid and loans because it doesn't like the Haitian president. "We have very serious concerns about the leadership of Jean Bertrand Aristide," said Roger Noriega, U.S. representative to the Organization of American States (OAS) and former chief of staff of archconservative Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C. Whatever Noriega's problems with him are, Aristide was unquestionably elected president by a democratic majority in 2000, unlike George W. Bush.
Noriega denies any U.S. aid embargo. "We have given over $120 million worth of assistance to Haiti in the last two years," he says. But aid has not gone to the Haitian government but to nongovernmental organizations that are often working at cross-purposes with the Haitian government.
Meanwhile, over the past eight years, Washington has funneled some $70 million to create, fund and organize an opposition to President Aristide. Bush administration officials will not release aid until this opposition has wrested power, or at least a power-sharing arrangement, from Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas Party. This is Washington's version of a democratic struggle.
(snip) http://www.progressive.org/Media%20Project%202/mpin602.html |
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