*   *   *   HAITI INFO   *   *   *

            News direct from the people and organizations 
             of Haiti's democratic and popular movement

                    21 September 1996, Vol. 4, #22

       ***   HAITI INFO now has photos in every issue   ***

Contents:
                       PREVAL: "FAR FROM THE PEOPLE"
                       SEPTEMBER 11: GOVERNMENT CONDEMNED
                       GONAIVES JUSTICE UPDATE
World of Labor:        WORKERS ORGANIZING AT TWO FACTORIES
                       NURSES AND ASSISTANTS STRIKE FOR BACK PAY
Close-up:              AMERICAN BELLICOSITY


Stories:

                PREVAL: "FAR FROM THE PEOPLE"

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Sept. 20 - Insecurity persists, as do violent 
threats from former members of the Forces Armees d'Haiti (FADH), 
but popular outrage at the soldiers' audacity continues also, 
despite people's uncertainty and even fear. At the same time, 
popular organizations and state employees keep staging protests, 
and, for the first time since leaving office, ex-President Jean-
Bertrand Aristide has issued serious criticism of the policies of 
his "twin." 

All of these factors appear to have had their effect on President 
Rene Preval, who can no longer ignore the fact that his government 
has no popular support, and that people are fed up with the lack 
of justice, the corruption, high prices, and lack of improvement 
in their lives, despite promises.

Context: More Threats, Protests

Insecurity is inescapable: A policeman was shot by an attache he 
was attempting to disarm; on the eve of Sept. 11 [see other 
story], the Lafanmi Selavi car wash, connected to the Aristide 
orphanage, was sacked; two men, one an ex-soldier, were arrested 
at the airport with five suitcases full of arms, and robberies and 
murders continue.

The ex-FADH members have also stuck to their campaign. On Sept. 9 
they issued a letter demanding negotiations with the president, 
announcing they would be represented by lawyer Rene Julien, of the 
U.S.-AID funded Amicale des Juristes, and Serge Beaulieu of Radio 
Liberte, a virulent enemy of the Lavalas movement and outspoken 
coup-supporter. (He accompanied ex-Gen. Raoul Cedras to Governer's 
Island in 1993.) They said that if negotiations do not happen by 
Oct. 5, "school will not open this year. Do the responsible 
thing."

But popular outrage at the ex-soldiers, as well as with the 
government for saying it would find money for them [see last 
issue] continues to grow. That anger comes on top of existing 
popular pressure from state employees owed their salaries [see p. 
2] and citizens angry about the lack of infrastructure or 
services. For instance, the roadblock in Limbe was finally 
removed, but only after Preval flew in. The next day in Port-de-
Paix, angry parents protested to demand a school. 

A final pressure on the president is more U.S. heavy-handedness: 
on Sept. 14, suddenly over 40 heavily armed secret servicemen 
arrived at the National Palace. Overseas, the mainstream press 
said the new soldiers were here to clean out the palace guard 
which "unnamed U.S. officials" claim is full of murderers, gang 
leaders, and untrustworthy Aristide followers. Here, despite the 
government's efforts to minimize their presence by saying they 
came to "instruct" local guards, the shame of asking foreigners to 
assure the president's  security is undeniable. 

Preval Accepts Criticism

All of this adds up to one thing, which Preval finally figured 
out: just when it needs it the most (to be able to stand up not 
only to the right-wing, but also the occupants), the government 
finds itself with no popular base of support.

In his address -15 minutes long, for which he bought airtime - 
Aristide put it this way: "Since the return, each day more, today 
more than yesterday, the ravine of distance between the 
politicians in power and the little people in the family is 
gaping... There should be good relations between the Lavalas in 
power and the Lavalas of the pavement." 

Aristide also attacked "various Lavalas politicians who, in their 
maneuvers to cut up the cake of power, are sowing division, 
confusion, complications and sadness in the Lavalas family," and 
once again called privatization "a cigarette lit at both ends" 
that was entered into too quickly.

This time, Preval accepted the criticism, although he tried to 
dodge the privatization question by saying Aristide criticized it 
"because you have to undertake it with a lot of caution." But, he 
did admit:

"Aristide criticized the government. We criticize the government. 
The government criticizes itself. Sometimes we see we are going 
too slowly... but it is because we have a state apparatus that we 
inherited. We did not form it... but we accept the criticism... 
Secondly, we are a little far from the people, it's true and that 
is why we have started up contacts with popular organizations 
again."

To begin to fill in the gap, on Sept. 12, Preval invited in 
representatives of "popular organizations" (none were named in the 
press reports) to discuss justice, and on Sept. 16, after a 
meeting with the "friends" of Haiti (U.S., Canada, France, 
Venezuela. etc.), Preval took a step back from his government's 
promise to pay ex-soldiers. Caught between pressure from the 
tutors to pay and the population's outrage, and not wanting to 
alienate either, he dropped the matter in the parliament's lap, 
saying it will have to pronounce itself before any steps are 
taken. 

[PHOTO:  Two U.S. secret servicement in vests carrying large guns 
in the halls of the National Palace. Caption: The new 
"instructors" from the U.S. State Department in service at the 
National Palace. One tries to hide his face.[DAMO]] 


                   SEPTEMBER 11: GOVERNMENT CONDEMNED

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Sept. 11 - Eight years ago, thugs under the 
direction of then-Mayor Franck Romain led an attack on St. Jean 
Bosco, the church of Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, torching it, 
killing at least 13 and injuring another 77, including one 
pregnant woman stabbed in the womb.

Three years ago, army attaches and members of the CIA-linked FRAPH 
(Front pour l'Avancement et le Progres Haitien) dragged 
businessman Antoine Izmery out of a commemorative mass at Sacre 
Coeur church and shot him in the head in the middle of the street.

This year popular organizations and others marked the day by 
protesting government policies and inaction, and especially its 
failure to find justice for victims of putschist attacks.

St. Jean Bosco Groups

The six organizations of the "St. Jean Bosco Coordination," which 
includes the St. Jean Bosco Prayer Group, other ti legliz groups, 
Solidarite Ant Jen and Veye yo, issued this statement: 

"Eight years after the St. Jean Bosco massacre, three years after 
the death of Antoine Izmery, the Lavalas power has done nothing 
against the criminals. No serious inquiry has been held, justice 
is sold 'two for one'... 

"The upside-down policy of reconciliation of the Lavalas power has 
become a fish bone stuck in the throat of the people. The American 
rat's policy of bite and blow ['good cop-bad cop'] with the 
complicity of Lavalas protects well the criminals and dumps the 
country into more trouble," the note said.

The St. Jean Bosco groups, members of which meet at the burned-out 
shell of the church for mass or prayer on Sundays, were unified in 
their rejection of the neoliberal economic orientation, where "the 
country is becoming more and more dependent" and the decision to 
pay the ex-soldiers.

"To pay assassins is an immoral, anti-popular and anti-national 
act... The popular sectors should always remember that the only 
poison to the arrogance of the criminal macoute assassins is 
consequent mobilization with good self-defense brigades," the 
groups continued. "The people should get a break from the high 
prices and unemployment that the bourgeoisie and macoutes imposed 
during the 30 years of Duvaliers and three years of coup d'etat. 
Today the  opportunists and 'big eaters' [a term that has come to 
mean the Lavalas functionaries that use their new positions only 
to enrich themselves] should quit dancing on the peoples' 
stomachs."

The groups also held two sessions of prayer and reflection, on 
impunity and on the high cost of living, and a press conference 
where victims of the St. Jean Bosco massacre said that they have 
never had responses to the legal complaints they filed. They also 
held a mass, called "Organized people can walk on the macoute's 
fire," with songs that decried the lack of justice and the 
economic situation.

Others Also Denounce

Others also marked the day. Mouvman Peyizan Papay (MPP) denounced 
the lack of justice for all victims: "Governments come and go, the 
same murderers continue to operate without any fear because the 
rope of justice has not grabbed them by the neck." MPP also 
demanded disarmament, justice and reparations, "if the government 
does not want to end up in the trash can of history."

Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who did nothing to 
satisfy peoples' demands for justice while in office, issued a 
statement condemning the eight years victims have waited: "What we 
know in the daytime, at night we don't need a lamp to illuminate: 
the justice system is gangrened and corrupt. The cowardliness and 
indifference of many officials who are supposed to provide justice 
and security should not let victims drown in discouragement."

Father Yvon Massacre, a member of the government and one of its 
strongest supporters, and who witnessed Izmery's assassination in 
1993 and was part of Izmery's KOMEVEB (Komite Mete Men pou fe 
Verite a Blayi), denounced the absence of justice, which he said 
accounts for the ex-soldiers' arrogance, and called for the 
removal of all judges who supported the coup d'etat.

"The executive must accept it's responsibility and throw them out, 
even if you have the impression you are violating some law or 
article of the constitution," he said in an interview on Radio 
Kiskeya. "These judges lost the right to benefit from the 
constitution."

President Rene Preval placed flowers at Sacre Coeur and at St. 
Jean Bosco, and gave interviews about his memories of the massacre 
and of Izmery. He deplored the lack of justice and said: "As long 
as there is no justice in the country, there will be disorder."

At St. Jean Bosco, people gathered around Preval in a noisy crowd, 
protesting at the lack of justice. One said that his visit was a 
"good gesture," but "the more beautiful gesture would be putting 
ropes around the necks of the people who did this massacre."

"You promised to give reparations to us and instead you are giving 
money to the military!" a more angry man yelled above the 
complaints of the others. "We don't have a single word to say to 
that."

Preval did not stay for the mass, and so did not see that the ti 
legliz members threw his bouquet into a back room before everyone 
else arrived. One youth said: "We are asking for justice, not a 
wreath of flowers."

As the years pass, more and more people are realizing that, even 
if it keeps up a demagogic rhetoric on justice, the government has 
no will to treat the question seriously, and it is not the 
political backing of Max Antoine, a former human rights lawyer, as 
Minister of Justice that changes anything. 


                     GONAIVES JUSTICE UPDATE

GONAIVES, Sept. 18 - The local Justice et Paix issued an angry 
statement after learning that army Capt. Cenafils Castera and Jean 
Tatoun will not be tried this fall for their parts in the Raboteau 
massacre.

The rights group called on people to "organize themselves" to 
protest and accused the highest levels of government, especially 
the Justice Minister, of "irresponsibility" and "lightness," 
saying: "Many signs show that the new government has not made the 
demands for justice and reparations the real priority of its 
action... [It] prefers to organize the pensions of ex-soldiers." 

(Today, Agence Haitienne de Presse reported that the entire court 
session has been cancelled because of a lack of jury members.)


World of Labor:
                 WORKERS ORGANIZING AT TWO FACTORIES

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Sept. 19 - After months of relatively quiet 
organizing, workers at two textile assembly factories have formed 
unions and are fighting for their rights, better salaries and 
better conditions, but in a country where unions have 
traditionally been repressed or co-opted, they know they are 
facing big challenges. Haiti Info met with some of the organizers 
to see how the initiatives were going.

At both Worldtex and Classic Apparel, workers have been meeting 
secretly after work, circulating leaflets and discussing in 
corners or outside the factory in order to avoid repression. Even 
with those precautions, and despite the fact that both 
international and Haitian law recognize the right to organize, 
when the Worldtex workers registered the union at the Ministry of 
Social Affairs, as required, and then told the factory, five of 
the committee members were fired. They filed protests at the 
Tribunal de Travail immediately, but so far remain out of work.

When questioned about the incident, Worldtex administrator Jean-
Claude Marcelin claimed the workers were fired before the union 
was formed, and also that for him, the union does not "exist" 
until he gets a list of the names of all the members, something 
that the workers are not obligated to provide, and have refused to 
do, for obvious reasons. 

"People want the union but they are discouraged," said a woman 
member of the new committee, chosen to replace those fired.

"For six months, every time we mobilized they would break us... 
fire many of us," a man added. "We are still trying to organize, 
even though there is constant pressure." 

After firing the organizers, Worldtex, which has 180 employees, 
agreed to listen to the workers' demands, which are: 1. to rehire 
those fired, 2. to accept the workers' right to organize, 3. to 
cease illegal revocations and, 4. a collective contract. 

"They said they accepted... but now we'll see if in actions they 
really accept them," said the woman. 

At Classic Apparel, which has 500 workers in two plants, workers 
registered their organization in August. The first thing owner 
Marie-Claude Bayard did was ask for a list of all members of the 
union.

"Maybe she had an idea in her head!" said a woman organizer. 

The committee did not hand over the list. Classic agreed to hear 
their demands anyway, which include a collective contract, a 
minimum salary of 75 gourdes (about US$7.00) a day, a lower quota, 
paid holidays (which Haitian law guarantees but many factories do 
not respect) and sanctions for supervisors who threaten workers. 

Committee members said employees support the organizing effort: 
"We have a majority, but many people are afraid because they say 
they hear there will be firings." 

But a bulletin written by the Classic organizers for the workers 
there shows the determination they have, despite the odds:

"Many workers that are interested in the union are just watching 
and waiting. Their problem is, they understand the necessity of 
organizing, but do not want to take the risk... We in the union 
understand them... but friends, don't ever forget, you can't make 
an omelette without breaking eggs! Look where we have arrived:... 
The boss is going to negotiate with us!...    Come and continue 
the journey with us!"

UPDATE Sept. 21: Yesterday Worldtex laid off a number of 
employees. More details in a future Haiti Info.  


           NURSES AND ASSISTANTS STRIKE FOR BACK PAY

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Sept. 20 - Nurses and auxiliaries at the capital's 
biggest public clinic, the Cathedral Health Center, have now been 
on strike for a week. On Wednesday, following a call from the 
Syndicat du Personnel Infirmier (SPI), they were joined by nurses 
and aides at the  Hopital de l'Universite d'Etat d'Haiti (HUEH), 
and other health centers.

The problem? At HUEH, Cathedral and other clinics, workers still 
have not received the raises promised to them 15 months ago. Also 
at HUEH, some 40 workers have been working without pay for a year. 
On Tuesday SPI, a union with about 500 members, called on all un- 
and underpaid workers to strike, and also denounced what it calls 
the Ministry of Health's union-busting move of transferring 
personnel without consultation.

At the Cathedral center, nurses have been protesting, negotiating, 
and occasionally holding 24-hour strikes for over a year to demand 
the salary adjustments they were promised under the Jean-Bertrand 
Aristide administration, and have a fat dossier of memos from 
government officials promising their raises "in the shortest delay 
possible," and "soon," and although they have received some of the 
back pay owed them, they have never seen their checks adjusted. 
For instance, an aide's salary is now supposed to be 2,000 gourdes 
(about US$133) a month, but for 15 months it has stayed at  900 
gourdes (US$60), which cannot come near to supporting her and her 
family. 

The Cathedral nurses and aides, who are supported by the doctors 
there, said they did not want to strike (the way other state 
workers did to get their raises), because of the inconvenience to 
patients. But now it has gone on too long, and nurses and aides 
are angry and also afraid they will not be able to pay tuitions 
when schools open next month.

"I'd like to tell Minister Mallebranche something. If his mother 
and father did not pay for his schooling, he would not be minister 
today!" said one aide interviewed this week. "They owe us eight 
months of augmentations, but there are some people who have never 
been paid at all!... I'd like the bosses to open their eyes to see 
this situation, to see what they are doing!"

Another aide started to talk but then simply broke down into 
tears.

When President Rene Preval visited HUEH yesterday to inaugurate a 
new pharmacy, nurses protested once more. Preval was not at all 
ashamed to reveal, again, his government's dependence on loans and 
"aid," and his willingness to use  it as blackmail. He told the 
women that if parliament voted on the [neoliberal] laws by Friday, 
everybody would be paid. Not surprisingly, the new pharmacy was 
paid for by U.S. AID.

Minister of Health Rodolphe Mallebranche was also there, and told 
the nurses to write him a letter asking for a meeting, a "strange" 
request during a strike, according to SPI. He also said the 
Ministry of Finance just promised 10 million gourdes to partially 
cover the 29 million gourdes owed to employees around the country, 
and that he hoped the SPI has the "wisdom" to end the strike now.

But the nurses are fed up with promises.

"I'd like to know if Haiti is becoming a country with a future 
only for the bourgeois people!" one aide said. "And if poor people 
are not allowed to live here. And if all our children are going to 
be good for is washing rich peoples' cars for five cents."

[PHOTO:  Nurses in white dresses holding up signs. Caption: Nurses 
protesting outside the Hopital de l'Universite de l'Etat d'Haiti 
on Thursday. Sign says: "Militants for participation yesterday, 
strong-arm bosses today."]


Close-up:              AMERICAN BELLICOSITY

Despite its flowery homages to democracy, world peace and human 
rights, the U.S. has once again revealed its policy of aggression 
that will stop at nothing to protect its own interests. As if 
proof were needed, the latest events in Iraq show how far the U.S. 
government will go: it funded paramilitary forces, assassination 
attempts, coup d'etat plots and then finally, unilaterally, 
launched a missile attack.

To justify the latter, President William Jefferson Clinton 
blustered that "when you abuse your own people or threaten your 
neighbors you must pay the price." But if that was enough to 
convince and exploit a credulous, naive and depoliticized American 
public (he got a 74 percent "approval rating" for the strikes), 
Clinton's move annoyed U.S. allies around the world, highlighted 
existing contradictions between the U.S. and its traditional 
regional and European allies, and laid bare the complexity of a 
region where U.S. imperialism does not necessarily have carte 
blanche. 

"Coalition" of One

Six years ago, after Iraq sent troops into Kuwait and President 
George Bush saw his chance to both assert U.S. muscle in the 
strategic oil region and to overcome "the wimp factor" at home, he 
was able to cobble together a coalition by calling in his chips 
with some allies, bullying others and because some neighbors were 
concerned with Saddam Hussein's expansionist moves. But this time 
around, Washington had to go it alone. After it supposedly 
"consulted" with other nations, its Sept. 3 and 4 missile attack 
was backed only by its traditional imperial side-kick, Britain. 
Its major regional allies (and the recipients of millions of U.S. 
aid dollars), Turkey and Saudi Arabia, would not even let U.S. 
bombers take off from their territories. More recently, when the 
U.S. sent over troops, F-16s and Stealth bombers as "containment," 
only Kuwait and Bahrain, and only after Defense Secretary William 
Perry spend a weekend asking, allowed the boats to dock and the 
planes to park. 

The State Department this week sloughed off the reticence, saying: 
"If the countries don't want to agree with us after being 
consulted, that's their right... Ultimately, we have to act in our 
own... interests."

But the U.S. interests this time so blatantly ignored 
international law, they were almost universally condemned. 
Although the Saudi government held its tongue, the Al-Hayat 
journal, owned by a Gulf War commander, said Iraq's attack "was 
more legitimate than the U.S. missile strikes." Turkish Finance 
Minister Abdullatif Sener said "regional problems should be 
resolved by the countries in the region" and that "unilateral 
intervention by some countries out of the region is not 
appropriate." The 22-member Arab League loudly attacked the U.S. 
for violating the sovereignty of a sister state.

Condemnation did not come from the Middle East only. For the first 
time in decades, the U.S. and Britain failed to get a Security 
Council rubber stamp. After three days of discussion, the Council 
refused to condemn Hussein, and would not even comment on the 
incident. Russia, which announced it would veto such a resolution, 
said the U.S. attacks were "disproportionate and not acceptable."

Having come to expect docile obedience from the U.N., American 
feathers were naturally ruffled. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. 
Madeline Albright huffed: "It's unfortunate that at this stage the 
Council was not able to speak on the subject... This just shows 
that sometimes the council is not the most effective way to deal" 
with crises.

Other critics, quiet but unmistakable, were Egypt, China and 
France, which said it respects Iraq's sovereignty and has refused 
to send its airplanes to patrol what the U.S. has unilaterally 
tried to designate as a new, expanded southern "no fly zone" 
stretching up to the 33! parallel, reaching the southern outskirts 
of Baghdad.

U.S. Went too Far

The near-universal condemnation of U.S. actions and the collapse 
of the "Operation Desert Storm" coalition are not surprising. This 
time around, even the other imperial powers appear to feel that 
the U.S. has gone too far. Not only was it asking for support to 
flagrantly violate international law and U.N. charter, but that 
came on top of a long period of U.S.-led intervention, not only in 
the region, but also into the internal affairs of individual 
countries there. 

For the past five years, the Central Intelligence Agency has been 
spending at least US$20 million a year to arm and train various 
paramilitary forces (including the one that Hussein backed up 
militarily with his troops in Erbil), to set up television and 
radio stations, to pay for acts of sabotage aimed at making the 
country look like it was "descending into chaos" and even to back 
coup d'etat attempts against Hussein. The CIA also recently funded 
and armed the Jordan-based Iraqi National Accord (INA) which also 
counted former Iraqi soldiers in its ranks and was attempting to 
infiltrate Iraq's Republican Guards. (Instead, the opposite 
happened. This summer the Iraqi government carried out widespread 
arrests and executions of between 100 and 2,000 INA soldiers.)

Within Iraq, the CIA mostly worked through the Iraqi National 
Congress (NIC), which it founded and financed, and which was a 
coalition that included the two different armed Kurdish factions 
that clashed in Erbil, defectors from Hussein's government and 
army, and other dissidents. All of the efforts were a result of a 
Bush-authorized covert action aimed at promoting a "rolling coup" 
(that would spread south), a "silver bullet" (Hussein's 
assassination) or "a palace coup." 

Parallel to that, the U.S. and its allies - Britain and France - 
were supporting "Operation Provide Comfort," supposedly to bring 
in humanitarian aid and help settle Kurdish refugees who had fled 
north after a military offensive from Baghdad (which the U.S. 
stood idly by and watched) in 1991. 

When the CIA agents - who were operating out of four houses full 
of computer, communications and listening equipment - heard that 
the Iraqi army was moving north, they evacuated, taking only their 
security guards with them and leaving their stunned "assets" 
behind. News reports say over 100 NIC soldiers were killed on the 
spot by the advancing troops, who had lists of names and 
addresses, and that some 200 or so escaped. Others put the number 
of escapees up around 1,200. In any case, certainly at least some 
got out of the region this week when the U.S. airlifted 2,075 
"employees" and their families to Guam where they will probably be 
granted U.S. asylum.

CIA Strikes Again

The blatantly illegal and subversive actions of the CIA in Iraq 
should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with modern world 
history.  In Nicaragua, the CIA operated for years, funding and 
arming the Contras. When U.S. lawmakers cut off the cash, the CIA 
and U.S. Army not only ran drugs, but also sold arms to Iran, at 
the time a big U.S. "enemy," to keep the money flowing.

In Cuba, after the Bay of Pigs invasion, a blatant violation of 
Cuba sovereignty and also a miserable and embarrassing failure for 
John F. Kennedy where over 100 Cubans were killed and at least 
1,000 arrested, the CIA launched Operation Mongoose, an 
assassination plot against President Fidel Castro. In Vietnam, as 
the U.S. public has only recently learned, at the same time as the 
U.S. was fighting a conventional war and running "low intensity 
warfare" operations (assassinations), the CIA ran Op Plan 34a, 
where it sent hundreds of agents into North Vietnam. The "assets" 
were abandoned until this year, when an ashamed Washington agreed 
to pay US$20 million in back salaries to the agents and their 
families. 

In Haiti, the CIA can claim a victory. It was a team of CIA assets 
- the High Command of the Armed Forces of Haiti, including Gen. 
Raoul Cedras - that pulled off the successful Sept. 30, 1991, coup 
d'etat and that ran the first two years of a targeted offensive 
against the democratic and popular movement. Later, the CIA-funded 
FRAPH (Front pour l'Avancement et le Progres Haitien) was set up 
to carry on, and successfully eliminated leaders, terrorized the 
nation and helped the U.S. assure its interests would prevail over 
its rivals at the U.N. by staging demonstrations and bullying 
diplomats.

Behind the Missile Strikes

In Iraq however, the CIA quite obviously failed in its mission and 
that failure, in part, prompted the missile strikes. In addition, 
for the second time this summer, Hussein had exposed and defeated 
a U.S.-backed force. He had to be punished. To draw attention away 
from the embarrassing situation in the north, U.S. government 
officials, the parrot-like U.S. press following faithfully, 
focused on the missile strikes in the south. 

"Our objectives are limited but clear: to make Saddam pay a price 
for the latest act of brutality, reducing his ability to threaten 
his neighbors and America's interests," Clinton said, with no 
reference to the U.S. defeat. After the 44 million-dollar missiles 
had crashed down on Iraq, he announced: "Our mission has been 
achieved."

But the U.S. attack, which got bipartisan support at home and may 
have also provided Clinton with an additional boost as the 
presidential race heads down the final stretch, was far from a 
victory, outside of the universe of U.S. television polls. It was 
a failure militarily, where not only were U.S.-backed troops 
executed and dispersed, but where Hussein appears as cocky as ever 
(he immediately began not only to repair the damage but has even 
dared to snipe at patrolling planes once or twice), as well as the 
diplomatic front, where the U.S. stands virtually alone.

Contradictions & Diverging Interests

The reaction of the U.N. and the traditional U.S. allies shows the 
contradictions that are building up between the imperialist 
countries, many of whom have their own interests to look after. On 
the eve of the attack, Iraq was readying to begin to sell US$1 
billion of oil every 90 days (the "oil-for-food" agreement, 
Security Council Resolution 986) and France, among other 
countries, was ready to do business. It used to be Iraq's largest 
trading partner before the six-year-old embargo, and has recently 
been trying to regain influence in the region. As for Russia, 
despite its general obedience to Washington, it has tried to hold 
an independent line in the Middle East, and chose this example of 
U.S. imperialism - one of the clearest in recent history - to take 
a stand. 

At the same time, many nations, especially European, are angry 
with recently signed D'Amato law, which follows closely on the 
Helms-Burton law and which will supposedly punish foreign 
companies doing business with Lybia and Iran. (Not surprisingly, 
the U.S. has no problem with Iran when its interests are at stake. 
The U.S. and Iran have been supporting the same Kurdish faction in 
northern Iraq.)  And the U.S.'s case is not helped by the fact 
that it belligerently and, once again, all alone, continues to vow 
it will block any attempt to keep Boutros Boutros-Ghali in office. 
Such statements surely do not win it cooperation from the 
Secretary General.

All of these factors show U.S. imperialists that they do not 
always have carte blanche, especially in that complex and unstable 
region where so many interests, not the least of them oil, are at 
stake, and remind them that the situation has evolved from six 
years ago. The U.S. no longer has the Arab nations, who fear that 
some day they could be the target of U.S. imperialists or their 
subalterns, at its beck and call, and Washington may not always 
get a free ride from the Security Council when it goes too far in 
arrogant violation of international laws and principles.

Clinton claimed that the  U.S. "achieved its objective." But the 
usual White House watchers have made a mistake. The recent hemming 
and hawing, like the cooling off over the weekend and then this 
week's dispatch of 3,500 more soldiers, should not be put down to 
the usual Clinton mushiness and poll-watching. Instead, it is much 
more a sign of the compounded failure of the military, diplomatic 
and covert operations in the area and U.S. jockeying to make the 
best of the situation. Clinton's blustery threats may have 
convinced television viewers in the U.S., but not in many other 
places around the globe.

SOURCES: articles from Inter Press Service, The Baltimore Sun, The 
Independent, The Washington Post and TIME magazine.

[PHOTO: A missile being launched from the deck of a vessel. 
Caption: The launch of one of the cruise missiles fired at Iraq 
earlier this month. [REUTERS]]



ABOUT HAITI INFO:

* Haiti Info is published every two weeks in Haiti by the 
Haitian Information Bureau, an alternative news agency.

* All articles Copyright HIB. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.  
Please cite Haiti Info and send copies of usage.

* Haiti Info is available by mail. 
For subscriptions, other correspondence 
and help for journalists: 
Haitian Information Bureau, 
c/o Lynx Air, Box 407139, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, 33340, USA.
For electronic mail:  hib@igc.apc.org.