8 - The Michigan Daily - Friday, March 22, 1996
NATION/WORLD
Violence
threatens U.S.
aid to Haiti
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON - New Haitian President Rene
Garcia Preval, visiting Washington yesterday for his
first official meeting with President Clinton, acknowl-
edged a spate of police and political violence in his
impoverished Caribbean country but blamed the prob-
lems on matters beyond his control.
Although he came to Washington for economic aid,
Preval was dogged by questions about violence in his
nation. He repeatedly defended the intentions of his
inexperienced police force and said he needs more
time to deal with investigations of political assassina-
tions.
Violence looms as a major obstacle to Clinton's
promise to provide a $100 million program of for-
eign aid to Haiti next year. So long as the police
continue to fire into crowds and cases of political
assassination remain unsolved, Congress will be
reluctant to appropriate all the money requested.
Congress already has frozen $2.5 million that was
supposed to help finance the police academy that is
turning out new policemen.
The persistence of violence is a dispiriting cloud on
what the Clinton administration regards as one of its
major foreign policy triumphs-the return ofdemoc-
racy to Haiti. For this reason, Preval found the issue
raised in his meetings with both Clinton and Deputy
Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, according to U.S.
officials.
Clinton, welcoming Preval to the White House,
said in front oftelevision cameras: "I'm very proud of
the progress that Haiti has made in preserving its
freedom and liberty and very pleased that, when
(Preval) was inaugurated, it marked the first peaceful
transfer of power from one democratically elected
president to another in 200 years."
Preval, who succeeded Jean-Bertrand Aristide as
president last month, told reporters at a breakfast
meeting that it is difficult to solve cases of alleged
political assassination because of "a corrupt judicial
House passes -f
tougher illegal
h immigration bil1:,
WASHINGTON (AP) -Moving on
an issue that sprang into the Campaign
'96 spotlight, the House late yesterday
passed sweeping legislation to combat
illegal immigration.
In the first major congressional ac-
tion on immigration in a decade, the
House deletedmost provisions that
would have re-
stricted legal im- ..wi..
migration before It
approving the
mammoth bill, secure 0
333-87.
"It is funda- borders,
mentally wrong to
take thejustifiable crime ano
anger about our
failure to deal jobs ,,,
with the issue of -
illegal immigra-
tion and piggy- _
back on top of that
anger a drastic ... cut in permanent
AP PHOTO
President Clinton met with Haitian President Rene Prevai in the Oval Office of the White House yesterday.
Clinton called for a program of "achievable reform" to jumpstart Haiti's feeble economy.
r
I1
system and a young and inexperienced police force."
Nevertheless, he said, he had appointed a special
judicial unit to investigate the cases and expects a
report next month.
The Haitian president, however, cast doubt on
the incidence of such assassinations, which some
critics insisted have reached 30 since Aristide re-
turned 17 months ago. Preval said, for example,
that he is not certain that the most celebrated case
- the murder of Aristide opponent Mireille
Durocher Bertin last year- was a case of political
assassination.
Raising a sore point in U.S.-Haitian relations,
Preval said the investigations of earlier assassina-
tions under military rule probably would be more
successful if the Pentagon released the documents
that American troops seized from Haitian army
headquarters when they landed in Port-au-Prince in
September 1994.
Deputy national security adviser Samuel Berger
told reporters later, "We are taking steps to return
those documents." But he said the U.S. government
wants to protect the names of some of the people,
including Americans, mentioned in the documents.
There reportedly is concern that release of the
documents would set off vendettas against those
who collaborated with the previous military re-
gime.
Preval said recent incidents in which police fired
into crowds could be traced to the inexperience and
lack of equipment of the new force of 5,200 police. In
all, 19 people have died at the hands of the police in
the past eight months. The Haitian president said that
fearful young police, lacking helmets or shields or
tear gas or water pumps, fired into crowds when
subjected to a barrage of stones.
up an 800-number in five states-
California, Texas, Florida, New York
and New Jersey - that employers
could call to check whether j6b'l unt-
ers were eligible to work in the United
States.
"It will help secure our borders, re-
duce crime and protect jobs for Aicri-
can citizens,'" said,
Rep. Lamar Sm
inp(R-TexasJ, the
bill's chiefauthor.
r E~ven Witout
Ir Evn *i'houtmany of the 'legal
educe immigration pro-
visions h4 had
p~rotCect pushed, Smith said
the bill "will en-
courage legal im-
Lamar Smith migrants tcbepr -
ductive netiib4
R-Texas of our comnuni-
ties and ease the
burden on the hard-working taxpayer."
The presidential primary campaign
gave a high-profile boost to the drive to
shut down illegal immigratioit' goth
California Gov. Pete Wilson, betbre he
dropped out of the GOP race, a'd tan-
didate Pat Buchanan made it iwrtegral
parts of their campaigns. r
Buchanan has blamed illegal aliens
among the causes of stagnant wags,i
flated welfare costs and rising ciir 6 and
has called for a five-year moratorili on
legal immigration to give those t*dw here
time to assimilate.
t
legal immigration, a cause and a force
that has been good for this country,"
said Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.),
who cosponsored the House amend-
ment deleting the legal immigration
limits.
The bill would double the U.S. Bor-
der Patrol by adding 5,000 new agents
over five years; crack down on smug-
glers of aliens, document forgers and
illegal aliens who overstay temporary
visas and bar members of foreign ter-
rorist organizations. It also would set
Protesters
attack U.N.
official's
miotorcade
Newsday
VUKOVAR, Croatia - The U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations,
Madeleine Albright, was stoned here
yesterday by militant Serbs shouting,
"Sieg Heil, Fascists" and "Get out of
Yugoslavia."
Local Serb police watched without
intervening as rocks shattered a large
glass pane on a U.N. van, raining glass
on Albright's senior aides. The protest-
ers also cracked windshields on two
other vehicles, but caused no injuries.
The attack, which took place in this
historic city still in ruins from a four-
month Serb bombardment in 1991, oc-
curred after Albright reaffirmed that
Serb-occupied East Slavonia will re-
vert to Croatian control under a U.S.-
brokered peace accord.
Peter Galbraith, the U.S. ambassador
to Croatia, said the violence appeared
organized, possibly by Slavko
Dokmanovic, the mayor of this devas-
tated Danube town, whom Galbraith
had excluded from Albright's six-hour
Election process determine&ruonedte
for upcoming Ireland vote
AP PHOTO
Sgt. Mark Patterson of Irvington, N.J., shakes hands with 9-year-old Bosnian
Ibrahim Jahic through the fence that marks the limits of a U.S. Army base about
11 miles east of Tuzla.
program.
"Frankly, it did not surprise me that
people who 'supported the destruction
of Vukovar did not like me," Albright
later told reporters. "A few rotten apples
and stones ... cannot destroy a very
important process" of bringing about a
peaceful transition in the region, she
added.
Supported by the Yugoslav army just
across the Danube River in northern
Serbia, local Serbs rose up against the
Croatian government in 1991, eventu-
ally driving out the Croatian military
and most non-Serbs in the population.
When Albright and her entourage
drove into this once-grand city of40,000
yesterday, there was hardly a building
not damaged by the constant artillery
bombardment. Many buildings lay in
complete ruins, others had no roofs to
protect them from the harsh weather.
Determined to see the damage close-
up, Albright stopped the motorcade
and began to walk, passing the fa-
mous Eltz Palace, named after a Ger-
man count.
They entered a makeshift open market,
and as they walked down the main aisle
local Serbs started to crowd around the
party, some shaking their fists. The people
appeared to be farmers, with the women
in aprons and the men in overalls.
The Washington Post
LONDON - Prime Minister John Major announced
yesterday a complicated election plan as the next step in
the Northern Ireland peace process, saying, with visible
frustration, that he was forced to produce his own pro-
posal because rival political parties there could not agree
on one.
Major's plan, as outlined to the House of Commons, calls
for voters in the British-ruled province to elect a 110-
member body, or forum, May 30; that forum will then select
delegates to "all-party" negotiations aimed at achieving a
permanent settlement to decades of political and sectarian
turmoil in Northern Ireland.
The plan appeared to please only one of the many fractious
parties in the troubled province-the Ulster Unionists, who
represent the majority of Northern Ireland's Protestants.
Catholic-based parties, as well as a smaller Protestant group
led by the Rev. Ian Paisley, ridiculed it. Still, none explicitly
declined to participate-except Sinn Fein, the political wing
of the outlawed Irish Republican Army, which is barred from
the process in any case unless the IRA agrees to halt its new
campaign of violence.
The election plan - put together by Major from an
amalgam of proposals by the Northern Ireland parties - is
designed to re-energize peace talks that began nearly a year
ago, after Catholic and Protestant paramilitary groups de-
clared a halt to 25 years of warfare in the province. Discus-
sions broke down about six months ago over the IRA's
refusal to "decommission" its weapons as a condition to Sinn
Fein's participation in all-party negotiations.
The IRA ended its cease-fire Feb. 9 by detonating a car
bomb at London's Docklands development that killed
two people and injured dozens. A second IRA bomb was
found days later in London's theater district and de-
fused; a third later exploded prematurely aboard qLon-
don bus, killing the man carrying it and injuring a,
number of bystanders.
Seeking to end the impasse, Major and Irish Prime Minis-
ter John Bruton jointly proposed an election as a preAidto-
all-party talks that would begin June 10. Bitter arguments
about the form, wisdom and comparative advantges
various parties of such an election erupted immediate
leading to Major's announcement today. ---i t
Under his plan, voters in each of 18 parliamentary con-
stituencies in Northern Ireland will cast ballots forpolitical
parties, and the top five vote-getters in each constituency
will send delegates to the forum. In addition, 2'mhiore
delegates will be allotted to the 10 parties receiVing the
highest number of votes province-wide. Each party repre-
sented will then select from its delegates a negotiating team
for the June 10 all-party talks; the forum itself will Have no
role in the talks.
Paddy Ashdown, leader of Britain's Liberal Den&ratic
Party, called the plan a "dog's breakfast" but agreed'that it
was better than nothing. Labor Party leader Tony Blair also
expressed concern but endorsed the idea, guaranteeing its
approval by Parliament- if not full participation by North-
ern Ireland's politicians.
Parliament members from Northern Ireland's Social-Demo
cratic and Labor Party, representing the province' siiiority
Catholic community, denounced the plan as a sell-6ito the
Protestant Ulster Unionist Party - whose nine seafs in the'
House of Commons help keep Major's ConservativePturty in
power here.
Major responded angrily to the charge, declaring tht if the
Social Democrats and others in the province had shown 'a
willingness to compromise, he wouldnot have had to impose
his own plan. -,.
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