Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 23, 1994 TAG: 9405230079
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MALPASSE, HAITI LENGTH: Medium
Eight hours after new world sanctions took effect, boats loaded down with fuel crossed Saumatre Lake from the Dominican Republic to Haiti. Boats docked every five minutes, with the four or five people aboard unloading the fuel in five- and 10-gallon jugs to black marketeers on the Haitian side.
Haitian border guards and armed civilian auxiliaries, remnants of the brutal Tonton Macoute private militia of the Duvalier dictatorship, allowed the gas to be loaded onto vehicles headed to the capital, Port-au-Prince.
The armed men forced a carload of foreign journalists in this border town to leave after about a half-hour.
Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, and the embattled Dominican administration of Joaquin Balaguer has failed to stop widespread embargo-busting along the overland border.
In Port-au-Prince, cargo ships still were being unloaded Saturday night, hours before the tougher embargo went into effect.
The embargo was imposed to force Haiti's army to return power to the country's first freely elected government, ousted in a 1991 coup.
Gas that sells for $1.60 a gallon in the Dominican Republic goes for $8 a gallon in Port-au-Prince, with the Dominican and Haitian militaries pocketing much of the difference.
Most Haitians cannot afford to pay $8 a gallon for gas, and the embargoes have left them without the food and medicine that relief planes once flew into the country. Many are dying because of it.
The United States has not ruled out military intervention to restore democracy in Haiti if this embargo fails.
Jean Valcius Estinval, a member of the Tonton Macoute, said Sunday he had a message for President Clinton: Send U.S. troops to dislodge this country's de facto leaders and the lives of thousands of Americans and other foreigners will be at risk.
"There are Americans, French, Canadians and Dominicans who live in this country," said Estinval, the head of a conservative political organization called the Political Front of Haitian Reminiscences, who was quoted in Newsday.
"Does Mr. Clinton want to have an international war? If Mr. Clinton invades, what will he do with the foreigners who are in the country?" Estinval added in what he acknowledged was a warning.
Stanley Schrager, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, estimated there are about 7,000 Americans in Haiti with 6,000 holding dual citizenship.
by CNB