Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 1, 1995 TAG: 9504040034
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAIT LENGTH: Medium
Yet Clinton also acknowledged that Haiti's road remains hard, its ultimate fate uncertain, even as he lowered the profile of American responsibility for whatever happens next.
A ceremony of splendor marked the occasion. It was staged on the steps of the elegant National Palace, its three domes bristling with sharpshooters and its fresh white paint gleaming in the tropical sun.
An estimated 22,000 Haitians crowded the dusty streets outside the palace gates. They strained to hear the statesmen signify that the nation's tortured history has passed a turning point and promises a better future.
But the pervasive Third World squalor just beyond the palace - a city of tin-roofed hovels, piles of rubbish, barnyard animals running free - gave mute testimony to the difficulty of the task ahead.
Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, restored to power by the troops Clinton sent Sept. 19, thanked the U.S. president for forcing out the military dictators who had toppled him in a 1991 coup.
Clinton's action, Aristide said, moved Haiti ``from death to life. The water of violence was transformed into the wine of peace.''
Clinton spoke to the Haitian people in reply.
``Today, once again, we give life to the ideals of democracy, justice and freedom. Today, we celebrate the restoration of democracy to your country. Never - never again - must it be stolen away,'' he said, to mild applause.
``Democracy does not flow naturally like the rivers, and prosperity does not spring full grown from the Earth. Justice does not bloom overnight. To achieve them, you must work hard, you must have patience, you must move forward together, with tolerance, openness and cooperation. I believe you can do it,'' Clinton said.
If Clinton's rhetoric strikes Americans' ears as patronizing, it did not seem so here amid the bleakness of Haiti.
For this is a land that has no functioning system of justice, no effective police force, no courts, no rule of law - and no visible prosperity. The average Haitian income is $260 a year. Its people are the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.
``For centuries, the Haitian people have known little more than blood and terror,'' Clinton said.
History confirms him, as do events as recent as this week. On Tuesday, assassins killed Mireille Durocher Bertin, 38, a prominent opponent of the U.S. presence here and formerly a spokeswoman for the ousted military junta. Aristide's interior minister has been implicated in the plot, although Aristide denied his involvement Friday. Many Haitians fear the paramilitary predators will return Haitian politics to rule by gun and thug once the U.S./U.N. mission ends.
At the end of Clinton's speech, officials released a dozen white doves. They were intended to symbolize peace, but they may have unintentionally symbolized a lot more than that about Haiti.
Most of the birds, apparently raised all their lives in cages, seemed not to know how to fly. They fluttered weakly above the crowd on the palace lawn, uncertain what to do with their sudden new freedom.
Some fell to Earth. But the crowd tossed the weak birds back toward the sky, in the hope that they might fly.
Just so does Haiti's fate appear to rest on tender wings.
by CNB