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

DATE: SUNDAY, July 10, 1994                   TAG: 9407100007
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI                                LENGTH: Short

AMERICANS IN HAITI: U.S. ATTACK A MISTAKE

About 2,000 U.S. Marines en route to Haiti on Saturday are prepared to step in and protect Americans if need be. But many Americans here say they don't want to be rescued.

They say that Marines being sent toward Haiti this weekend would not protect them, as Washington says, but may actually endanger their lives.

"I think it would be a good political ploy to say we are threatened; but we have had no direct threat, nor are we targeted. We could be if the Haitian government is provoked," said Eleanor Snare. She left a San Francisco teaching job in 1969 for Haiti, where she runs the Haitian-American Institute, a 1,600-pupil English-language school.

U.S. Embassy officials acknowledge the 3,500 Americans in Haiti are relatively immune from the military-tolerated political violence that targets neighborhoods considered loyal to exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

During a news conference Friday, President Clinton mentioned the possibility of military intervention in Haiti three times. Many Americans in Haiti believe a U.S. attack would be a mistake, and one, the Rev. Ron Voss, is circulating a petition appealing to Washington not to take such action.

"It would be the most bloody, useless waste of life that would ever happen," said Voss, 53, a pro-Aristide priest who runs a program matching American Roman Catholic parishes with 261 parishes or projects in Haiti.

by CNB