US-Haiti relations sour in lead-up to elections

By Neville Spencer Haiti's first presidential election since the ousting of the military regime is to take place on December 17. In the last few weeks violence has broken out accompanied by a souring of relations between President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the US government. On November 7, parliamentary deputy Jean Hubert Fueille was assassinated — most likely by right-wing death squads. Another deputy, Gabriel Fortune was also seriously wounded in the attack. Both the deputies were candidates of Aristide's leftist Lavalas organisation which swept the parliamentary elections held in June. The next day demonstrations took place. In the city of Les Cayes demonstrators burned and looted more than 20 homes belonging to people connected with the former military regime. A former member of the death squads, which killed thousands of Aristide supporters during the military regime, was killed. United Nations troops were called in to help the Haitian National Police. Searches were also made of the homes of several former Haitian military leaders including Lieutenant General Prosper Avril — a military ruler of the late 1980s — in which a cache of weapons were found. Documents connecting him to the 1994 murder of a priest close to Aristide were also reportedly found. Avril escaped the police and was later granted asylum by the Colombian government. In his speech at the November 11 funeral of his cousin and political ally Fueille, Aristide raised the ire of the US government by criticising the UN forces for failing to disarm the death squads and suggesting that they were therefore "accomplices" to the right-wing violence. According to a November 21 InterPress Service report Aristide is seeking to take advantage of the fact that the US government does not want the US-led UN mission in Haiti to look bad just as it is about to commit troops to Bosnia. While US ruling circles are reportedly outraged at Aristide, official pronouncements have been conciliatory. While Aristide installed Smarck Michel, a business leader and one of the most right-wing of the loose-knit Lavalas movement, as prime minister, the Haitian government's relations with the US have cooled since it has slowed down its implementation of US-backed privatisation plans. Since Aristide's return in October 1994, privatisations have sparked numerous protests from the popular movements; government agencies have recently been hit by strikes against privatisation. Michel resigned from his post in October complaining about the lack of support for the implementation of his economic plans from Aristide and the cabinet. On November 7, Michel was replaced by the more left-wing Claudette Werleigh and the government has decided to delay plans for more privatisations until after the December elections. The US has responded by delaying the disbursement of promised aid money. In another snub to the US government, Aristide is backing René Préval for president since he cannot stand for a second term. Préval, with a huge popularity rating, was prime minister in the pre-coup government and someone the US government wanted removed. Another source of the tension between the US and Haitian governments is US involvement in right-wing death squads. The US is still holding 150,000 pages of documents which it seized from the Haitian military and the FRAPH death squad after the UN military occupation began. Haitian officials have demanded them back, but the Pentagon claims that they are US property.