THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 8, 1994 TAG: 9407080547
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF AND WIRE REPORT
DATELINE: PANAMA CITY, PANAMA LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
Panama withdrew Thursday its offer to host thousands of Haitian refugees, complicating U.S. efforts to cope with the flood of boat people fleeing their military-dominated homeland.
At the same time, the Pentagon is preparing to expand facilities at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station to house up to 20,000 Haitian refugees - 60 percent more than officials had said is the maximum the base could handle.
The news comes as sentiment spreads among some Pentagon officials that military action is inevitable. They predict that an invasion is likely to come in August, once Congress leaves for its annual summer recess.
In Panama, the announcement Thursday by President Guillermo Endara drew widespread criticism. Endara had agreed only Monday to accept as many as 10,000 refugees from Haiti, provided the United Nations feeds and houses them.
U.S. Coast Guard cutters and Navy ships patrolling off Haiti have picked up more than 15,000 refugees since June 16, when President Clinton announced that fleeing Haitians would be considered for asylum in the United States. More than 10,000 of them have been picked up since Friday.
The island is being squeezed by a U.N. embargo aimed at driving out the military rulers who overthrew elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
A military task force that began building tent cities last week at Guantanamo will expand the project as soon as possible, Pentagon officials said Thursday. The capacity will grow in increments of 2,000 to 2,500 until reaching the 20,000 total.
Thursday morning, 10,661 Haitians were housed at Guantanamo, with about 1,500 more scheduled to arrive during the day, said Air Force Capt. Lindsay Borg, a spokesman for the task force.
Borg said the task force has ordered additional water desalination equipment to accommodate the extra Haitians. Officials had said the earlier ceiling of 12,500 refugees was dictated by the capacity of the base's water treatment plant.
The Guantanamo base is on a 45-square mile tract leased from Cuba's communist government. It must rely on food and other supplies imported from the United States and must produce its own electricity and potable water.
Borg said the flood of refugees is taxing food supplies at the base, but so far Haitians still are getting three freshly prepared meals daily. Some of the 2,000 U.S. troops who have come in to build and run the refugee camps are temporarily eating field rations, he said, but new mess facilities are on the way for them.
With thousands of Haitians fleeing daily, the administration announced this week that the boat people no longer are eligible for resettlement in the United States. Instead, they are to be given temporary shelter at ``safe havens'' in Guantanamo or at facilities yet to be built on several Caribbean islands.
A camp for up to 2,000 Haitians on Grand Turk Island, north of Haiti, is expected to open next week.
Meanwhile, the Clinton administration is preparing for an exit by Haiti's military leaders - whether by diplomatic means or by force. Analysts and Pentagon officials say U.S. troops easily could take the island nation, but Aristide and his backers oppose such a move, and Haitian troops could go underground to mount guerrilla-style resistance.
The White House has been working to put together an international U.N. peacekeeping force to take over any U.S. operation after 30 days or, at the most, three months.
At the United Nations this week, U.S. diplomats proposed a peacekeeping force of between 9,000 and 10,000, most of them U.S. troops, as opposed to earlier discussions of 2,500. Diplomats say thousands of troops might stay in Haiti until the next presidential election in 1995. MEMO: Staff writer Dale Eisman, the Associated Press and Knight-Ridder News
Service contributed to this report.
ILLUSTRATION: Helping the refugees: A personal account
Color photo
ALASTAIR WORDEN/Coast Guard
Coast Guardsmen aboard the cutter Tampa help a dehydrated man
rescued from a small sailboat off the coast of Haiti. Story, A2.
KEYWORDS: HAITI REFUGEES by CNB