THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 11, 1994 TAG: 9406110337
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PAUL RICHTER AND KENNETH FREED\
DATELINE: 940611 LENGTH: WASHINGTON
Supplementing measures enacted nearly a month ago, Clinton announced a commercial-flight ban that will begin June 25. The move is expected to halt at least two-thirds of scheduled air trips to and from Haiti.
{REST} The prohibition on transactions is intended to suspend wire transfers of cash, trade financing and even the carrying of cash from the United States to the island nation.
``The message is simple: Democracy must be restored, the coup must not endure,'' Clinton said at a White House briefing.
The flight ban exempts humanitarian missions that help feed about 1 million Haitians.
Similarly, to enable Haitian-Americans to continue to support families from abroad, the sanctions permit outsiders to send in sums of $50 each month.
Though the sanctions are meant to punish Haiti's rich elite, observers in the United States and Haiti said that many of those Haitians already have moved their assets to third countries, such as the Cayman Islands; many also have stockpiled goods on the island for their own survival and comfort.
But one Haitian businessman predicted that the flight ban would have a ``deep psychological impact'' on Haitians who ``have developed the idea that they have a right to go to Miami for recreation and to do business.''
However, he and others were skeptical that the ban would create pressure that would provoke the military into laying down its arms.
``They are in this to the finish,'' the businessman said.
{KEYWORDS} HAITI by CNB