He went back after the Congressional Black Caucus urged President Clinton and worked very closely with President Clinton to restore democracy to Haiti. He went back, and he gave up the fact that he had missed 3 years. He did not insist on serving 5 years, he just completed the term, 2 years. Like George Washington, he stepped down in order to guarantee there would be a constitutional process going on, just as George Washington stepped down. He stepped down and there was another president for 5 years, and then Aristide came back. He was reelected later on for another 5-year term.

It is important for people to know that Jean-Bertrand Aristide was not in charge of Haiti for all these years that you hear talked about, especially the year that the parliamentary elections were questioned. The parliamentary elections that were questioned were held and the irregularities that were charged, which involved six out of 100-some people elected, those irregularities were charged during a period when Jean-Bertrand Aristide was not in power. It is important to get the chronology straight.

There are many people who say that Jean-Bertrand Aristide has only one fault, and some of us might have a tendency to want to agree with that, and the fault is he is not a seasoned politician. He came out of the priesthood. He was a priest. He was almost murdered three times before he was elected president.

This priest, who some say is an inept politician, also was able to maintain influence, to maintain a following for all the years that have gone on since he was first elected. While he was out of office, he had influence and had a following. Does that sound like somebody who is inept and not a person who knows how to organize people?

He has been accused of being a ruthless dictator. I have been trying to find out what the basis of that charge is. What ruthless dictator do we know who would disband his army? What ruthless dictator would not want an army?

One of the most important things that Jean-Bertrand Aristide did when he went back after being deposed by the army was to abolish the army. The army of Haiti has been in charge ever since the United States created the army.

Most people do not know the United States Marines created the army of Haiti. In their long occupation of more than 30 years, they built the Haitian army. After they left, whenever there was somebody not liked by the rich governing families, the oligarchy of Haiti, whenever there was somebody not liked by the United States, the army was used to remove them. He got rid of the army. What ruthless dictator would get rid of the army?

I just want to say that this democratically elected president, this very unusual person of a magnitude you do not see in politics usually, who is accused of so many crimes in general, but when you start asking people specifically what he did, nobody ever has an answer.

Did he go all over the world shopping, like Baby Doc Duvalier and his wife, spending $1 million on a weekend? Did he have palaces built like Saddam Hussein while the population starved? Where is the personal use of government funds to be seen? Nobody can tell me specifically any of that.

But what I do know is because of his antipathy toward violence, because he understood the long history of Haiti and did not have an army, he has been taken advantage of by terrorists. Terrorists. If you look at the fact, this is a group of terrorists that has taken over Haiti. Terrorists.

Now, we have varying degrees of suspicion about to what degree our own government was involved. We do know certain individuals well known to our government who have cooperated with the CIA in the past have shown up among these terrorists. We do know that they had modern weapons, United States weapons, machine guns, grenade launchers and so forth, that are not made in Haiti.

We do know that our government said to Aristide, we will not accept your agreement. Aristide agreed to the CARICOM agreement, and our government would not support the legitimate government of Haiti, and say, well, you agreed, therefore we will step in and protect you from the violence until there is some kind of settlement. No. They said to Aristide as long as the opposition, as they called it, do not agree, we will not get involved in trying to guarantee the safety of your government.

They empowered the terrorists. Whatever else they did not do, whatever other lack of complicity there is, there is the open complicity of the United States Government in empowering the terrorists, making them equal to Aristide, saying unless they agree, you have a doomed government.

Beyond our own United States of America, the international community went along with all that, unfortunately.

There is a lesson, unfortunately, here, for all the Caribbean nations of this hemisphere and for small nations throughout the world. There is no more gunboat diplomacy. There will not be any obvious takeover that the United Nations can object to, but look forward to a new kind of takeover process; and that is the process with the use of terrorists.