Haiti: Policy At Sea

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Presidents who travel overseas know they can never entirely leave their problems back home. But for Bill Clinton, on a seven-day trip to Europe for | the G-7 economic summit, the crisis in Haiti pursued him like a bad nightmare. Throughout the week, refugees continued to risk their lives and take to the seas by the thousands, undeterred by the Administration's newly enunciated policy of diverting the boat people to other Caribbean countries rather than the U.S.

Then, about 45 minutes after leaving Warsaw on Air Force One Thursday night, Clinton got word from Washington that Panamanian President Guillermo Endara was having second thoughts about his decision to make space in his country for 10,000 refugees. After the plane landed in Naples, Clinton stayed on board to wait for one more call from Vice President Al Gore while members of the reception committee made small talk on the tarmac. The news was bad: Panama had backed out.

The President and his advisers tried to downplay the blow. While "sharply disappointed," his aides said, Clinton was not angry. Other Caribbean countries, they promised, would be found to replace Panama; Grenada, for instance, had agreed "in principle" to provide a haven for at least some of the refugees. But the sudden change of heart by Panama only deepened the impression that the Administration was practicing a kind of voodoo diplomacy toward Haiti, lurching from headline to headline and hoping that somehow the country's leaders would magically change their ways or disappear.

Thus the floundering seemed to increase the likelihood of Clinton's pursuing the one option that would make him look the most decisive: a full-fledged invasion of Haiti. All week there were signals that plans for military action were being accelerated. On Thursday, the Defense Department dispatched four amphibious warships carrying 2,000 combat-ready Marines to the waters off the coast of Haiti. The Pentagon revealed that three weeks ago Army Rangers and Navy Seals had conducted practice runs for an invasion of Haiti: staging a mock attack on an isolated airfield at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida and "capturing" a port along the Gulf coast. The exercise, which one military expert described as a "final rehearsal," was similar to maneuvers conducted just before the U.S. invaded Panama in December of 1989 to overthrow Manuel Noriega.

Just how imminent the invasion might be remained vague. The refugee crisis has increased the urgency for some sort of action to end the oppressive military rule in Haiti, and there is a sense that the Administration is backing into an invasion almost out of desperation. "No doubt about it," said one senior Pentagon official, "the stakes have gone up because of Panama's decision. We need to get ourselves into position." On Friday, Clinton issued another veiled warning to the military clique that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in September 1991. "I think the conduct of the military leaders will have more than anything else to do with what options are considered when," said Clinton. "And their conduct has not been good."