It is not too late for the President to step back from the threat of using force to reinstall Aristide. Lift the economic embargo on Haiti. Since economic sanctions were intensified on June 16, nearly 25,000 refugees have left Haiti in pursuit of a better life anywhere else. Nearly 16,000 refugees remain in what is little more than a concentration camp at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Meanwhile, the military leaders against whom the sanctions supposedly are targeted appear unaffected.
Economic sanctions are a blunt and usually ineffective instrument of foreign policy.
The Serbian leadership in Bosnia has just rejected the West's latest cease-fire proposal, despite the tough sanctions imposed on their principal supporters in neighboring Serbia. In Haiti, sanctions imposed after the 1991 coup against Aristide have only destroyed the subsistence economy there and created the very refugee crisis the Administration now cites as a principal justification for ending the stalemate by force. Lifting the embargo will ease the immediate crisis and allow refugees to return to a better life in Haiti. It is a necessary first step to a negotiated solution to this tragedy. Appoint a presidential commission to examine other options .