THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 13, 1995 TAG: 9505130239
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
In the sweltering midday heat of a stuffy room in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, last September, Robert Pastor had an unsettling vision: In a matter of hours, he would be on the receiving end of a U.S. military invasion.
It was time for some fast talking.
Pastor, in Hampton Roads to speak at Virginia Wesleyan College's commencement exercises this morning, was in the Haitian capital at the side of former President Jimmy Carter as Carter, Sen. Sam Nunn and Gen. Colin Powell held tense, last-ditch negotiations with Haiti's military dictators.
They had just found out that President Clinton had given up on diplomacy and had launched a military operation to oust the military regime. Paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division were already in the air.
Incredibly, it was just as much a surprise to the U.S. negotiators as it was to the Haitian strongman, Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, and his cohorts. The Americans knew an invasion was an option, but thought it was days away.
Pastor says it very nearly derailed the peaceful restoration of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.
For Pastor, a political science professor at Emory University and director of the Latin American and Caribbean Program at the Carter Center, those chaotic hours remain etched in memory.
Shortly after the U.S. negotiators arrived in Port-au-Prince, he said, they told the military leaders an invasion was imminent.
``Up until that moment, they did not believe that it would happen,'' Pastor said. ``This obviously focused their attention on serious negotiations and made possible, in my judgment, a successful agreement.''
The decision to use force, however, ``was not productive to that agreement,'' he said.
``We were negotiating with proud individuals. When they learned that the invasion was set in motion . . . they lost it.
``They were so angry, so enraged, that the second in command, Gen. Biamby, ran into the room and said, `We are now preparing our defenses. . . . '
``We had to come up with an alternative quickly.''
Pastor attributes the agreement to the ``iron will'' of former President Carter and the ``intense skills'' of Powell and of Nunn, a Georgia Democrat.
``It was the most intense negotiations I have ever witnessed - or expect to,'' he said.
Pastor believes the 11th-hour agreement with Haiti's military leaders averted a blood bath.
``If the agreement had not been reached, we would have launched a very tough invasion early Monday morning.
``It would have been an invasion similar to Panama, but with additional force in order to avoid the mistake of Somalia, which means that we would have come in shooting.
``We would have prevailed quickly, but there would have been great loss of Haitian life.
``I think there would have been American soldiers that would have died, but in order to keep those losses at a minimum, I think our soldiers would have fired at anything moving.''
Such an assault, he said, ``would have sowed the seeds of future resentment and made it impossible for a democratic transition to occur.''
When Carter, Nunn and Powell came home, they left Pastor behind in Haiti to facilitate the implementation of the agreement.
``In the early days,'' he said, ``there was a great deal of uncertainty in the country and also with regard to our military role. . . . We did not, as it turned out, have a plan to implement the option that was agreed to. U.S. troops and materiel were in the air and offshore for a very different kind of exercise than what we negotiated.''
During those confusing days, a U.S. Army officer, Capt. Lawrence Rockwood, became convinced that political prisoners faced the prospect of torture and murder in the Port-au-Prince penitentiary. Believing that his superiors were too preoccupied with protecting their own troops to look out for the Haitians, he attempted to investigate the prison on his own.
As a result, Rockwood is now before a court-martial at Fort Drum, N.Y., for violating the chain of command.
The Rockwood case ``raises a lot of difficult questions,'' Pastor said. ``I don't think there's any question that what he looked at deserved an investigation at the time. Whether he was the person to do that or whether somebody else or some other institution should have, I don't think it would be correct for me to make that judgment.''
Pastor, who served on the National Security Council in the Carter administration, was nominated by Clinton last year to be U.S. ambassador to Panama. But the nomination was blocked by Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Robert Pastor
KEYWORDS: HAITI by CNB