HAITI IN TROUBLE AGAIN

In what could be a nasty thorn in the side of the Clinton Administration as it prepares to sell the idea of American troop deployment to Bosnia, Haiti is back on the brink of social chaos. Yesterday, even as Clinton's National Security Advisor Anthony Lake was meeting with Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, riots broke out in a Port-au-Prince slum. Seven people were killed in riots last week; there were unconfirmed reports that four more died Thursday night. "One of the consequences of the way the Americans landed last year, without bloodshed," says TIME's Edward Barnes, "is that none of the real problems of poverty or the great animosities between rich and poor were addressed. Now that elections are coming up on December 17, the lid has been taken off." Barnes says that the installation of Aristide to the presidency was considered a major foreign policy achievement by the Clinton Administration. But Aristide was banned from running for re-election and is now believed to be fomenting the current unrest as a way of consolidating his power and perhaps sabotaging the elections. "He's sending a message to the rich," says Barnes, "that he is in power, whether he is president or not. You can't accuse him of ordering the killings, but he's definitely stirring the pot. Anthony Lake was there to warn him that if Haiti starts to come apart, he will lose American support, and there will be real consequences for him."