
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, October 21, 1993                   TAG: 9310210229
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

U.S. BACKS PLACATING HAITI ARMY

The Clinton administration said Wednesday that ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide might improve his chances of regaining power by broadening the base of his government, but officials strongly denied accusations that the proposal would further undermine the exiled leader.

During a sometimes chaotic White House briefing, a senior administration official said the proposal to add new politicians who support democracy to the interim Cabinet was one of a number of proposals intended to revive a peace agreement torpedoed last week by the army chief, Lt. Gen. Raul Cedras, and his backers.

But the official emphatically denied charges by a top aide to Aristide that the administration had tried to "sell out" Haiti's only freely elected president. The aide said U.S. officials, joined by U.N. mediator Dante Cauto, hoped to placate the army and police by giving them representation in the Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Robert Malval, an Aristide appointee.

The aide said the plan was "a fancy way for the United Nations and the United States to kowtow to these armed thugs and give them what they are seeking."

Later, talking to reporters in Washington, Aristide refused to discuss broadening his Cabinet, although he said he will seek political reconciliation once he returns to Haiti.

"Without reconciliation, we cannot speak of democracy," he said in a luncheon speech at the Inter-American Development Bank.

The furor over the interim Cabinet came as Aristide insisted that he still intends to return to Haiti on Oct. 30 to resume power under terms of the peace plan he and Cedras signed July 3 on Governors Island in New York.

Under the pact, Cedras and Police Chief Michel-Joseph Francois were to have resigned last Friday and U.N. military advisers, including about 600 Americans, were to have deployed on the island. But Cedras and Francois refused to quit and a band of thugs prevented the first contingent of American and Canadian troops from landing.

Also Wednesday, the White House averted a major foreign policy defeat when the Senate endorsed a compromise between President Clinton and Republican leader Robert Dole of Kansas on sending U.S. troops abroad.

The Senate voted 99-1 to back a non-binding resolution that puts Congress on record as insisting that it give its approval before any U.S. troops are used to enforce a peace accord in Bosnia. Only Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., voted no.

A Senate stalemate on using U.S. forces in Bosnia and Haiti ended earlier in the day with the agreement between Dole and the White House on new language that would impose fewer restrictions on Clinton's foreign policy-making.

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by CNB