Haiti Army Senses Victory in U.S.-Aristide Split : Caribbean: ‘They are surviving the embargo and they are laughing,’ a diplomat says of the military. Gas flows into the country despite ban.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti —  The open and bitter conflict between the Clinton Administration and Jean-Bertrand Aristide has left the military here confident that it has defeated conclusively all attempts to restore the exiled Haitian president to power, according to diplomats and Haitian political experts.

“They have control of the country,” one diplomat said of the military, “and they have no reason to change. They are surviving the embargo and they are laughing. They just don’t feel the pressure.”

The growing U.S.-Aristide dispute, which reached a public breaking point this week, has accompanied a virtual flood of gasoline into Haiti in defiance of a worldwide petroleum embargo designed to crush resistance to Aristide’s restoration.

So much fuel has come over the border from neighboring Dominican Republic in the last week that the black market price for gasoline and diesel fuel dropped nearly $3 a gallon in two days from a high of nearly $9.

“That’s still a very high price, and it’s not enough to restore things to normal,” a Haitian businessman said, “but it is certainly enough for the military to keep control.”

But the sources said the military victory is even more strongly perceived in the angry impasse between Aristide and the United States over a plan proposed by anti-Aristide legislators and endorsed by the Administration.

“They (the military) have won,” the diplomat said.

The plan calls for Aristide to name a prime minister and Cabinet acceptable to his domestic foes and to pardon the army officers who engineered his 1991 overthrow before he would be allowed to return to Haiti.

While Aristide rejected that sequence on grounds that it rewarded the people who deposed him and would undercut his ability to govern, he was most offended because the proposal made no mention of a date or timetable for his restoration.

Aristide, a fiery Roman Catholic priest who won an overwhelming election victory on a radically populist platform in 1990, had demanded that the military step aside before he would name a new government.

He also demanded that he return 10 days after the agreement was finalized.

It is not just Washington’s endorsement of the proposal drafted by some of Aristide’s strongest opponents that has disheartened Aristide supporters here.

“That was bad enough,” said one international official connected to the diplomatic effort to restore democracy, “but what Christopher said all but killed any chance of pressuring the military to give in.”

He was referring to a position taken by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher earlier this week to prevent the extension of the economic boycott imposed on Haiti last October when the army reneged, for at least the second time, on an accord to bring Aristide home.

Christopher told a congressional committee Wednesday that any strengthening of the embargo, now limited to petroleum products and arms, would depend on Aristide’s acceptance of the legislators’ plan.

Aristide dismissed the plan again Thursday as unworthy of consideration.

“What signal do you think that sent to the military?” asked another international official, who added that Christopher acted without informing or even consulting other nations involved in forcing the military to give way.

“Everything is in a state of confusion,” said another diplomat from that group, known as the “Four Friends of Haiti”--the United States, Canada, Venezuela and France.

Not only is there confusion among diplomats who thought of themselves as allies; sources say U.S. policy seems to have lost focus and purpose, an assessment echoed by a prominent businessman who recently met in Washington with Aristide and key State Department officials.

He reported that the situation is so bad that Aristide has cut off all direct contact with U.S. officials, who are reduced to asking those who have visited Aristide privately what the Haitian leader thinks.

“At this stage,” another Haitian expert said, “the Administration seems to have lost all perspective” because of its anger over what U.S. officials see as Aristide’s stubborn and unrealistic refusal to compromise.

“In one sense,” said a diplomat here, “I understand the State Department’s position. It is clear that Aristide is part of the problem, and that he either doesn’t understand that the military (and his civilian opponents) are here to stay and he needs to negotiate with them, or he really doesn’t want to return.

“However, I have to agree in part with Aristide; what reason has he to trust the Americans?”

The diplomat gave as an example of Washington’s wavering the American refusal to extend the embargo in spite of a U.S.-supported U.N. Security Council resolution that called for an inclusive economic and commercial boycott if the military had not stepped down by last Jan. 15.

“And for high officials to publicly criticize Aristide, that surely didn’t help,” the diplomat said.

Signs of the military’s confidence are plentiful. Human rights officials say murderous repression by the army and its allies has increased openly in spite of the return of international monitors.

“It is going on to show the country they will punish anyone who opposes them and that the international community can’t do anything to stop them,” said a foreign official based here.

The sense of victory also has ended speculation that there was a meaningful split within the military or that army commander Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras had planned to name himself as head of the government.

Some figures who said they spoke for Cedras’ perceived rival, Port-au-Prince Police Chief Michel-Joseph Francois, and had begun charging that Cedras was planning a takeover suddenly changed their assessments Friday.

Local radio stations reported, for instance, that Senate President Bernard Sansaricq, who had called for Cedras to resign and let Parliament name a new president, had recanted and was no longer charging the general with planning a new coup.

Several sources said there never was a split.

“There may be differences of opinion over tactics,” said one Haitian political expert with close ties to the military, “but they are unified on the main goal: Keep Aristide out.”

For the moment, observers say, that goal has been reached.

“We have to come up with something new,” one of the diplomats said, “but with the army convinced we (the international community) are either supporting them in secret or are foolish weaklings and Aristide refusing to compromise or accept reality, I don’t see any way out.”