BRIDGETOWN, Barbados -- Pressure is mounting within the Caribbean for a military solution to Haiti's political crisis.
Leaders of several nations in the region now openly support the use of a multinational force to reverse the coup that chased Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected president, into exile nearly three years ago.
In a closed-door meeting here last week with Bill Gray, the Clinton administration's special envoy to Haiti, several Caribbean leaders pressed the United States to move quickly to use military force to oust the coup leaders from power.
That's not surprising.
Haiti's political strife is having a devastating effect on island nations throughout this region. Haitian refugees now comprise roughly 20% of the population of both the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. That's the equivalent of 50 million Haitian refugees coming ashore in the United States.
Both the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos are hard-pressed to handle this explosive growth in population and the demands that these poor Haitians are putting on their social services, health care and educational systems. In some parts of the Bahamas, for instance, 80% of primary school students are Haitian.
"Every constituency in the Bahamas today is saying enough is enough," says Orville Turnquest, the country's minister of foreign affairs.
Of greater fear to Caribbean nations is what might happen elsewhere in the region if the military coup that toppled Haiti's fledgling democracy is allowed to stand. It could set off a wave of political instability from the Bahamas to Trinidad.
To prevent this - and stem the flow of Haitian refugees - Caribbean leaders want to quickly restore Aristide to power.
"I would love to see military intervention in Haiti," says Washington Misick, chief minister of the Turks and Caicos Islands. "I don't think it can be avoided."
He's not alone.
Leaders of Jamaica, Barbados and the Bahamas have told the Clinton administration they are willing to commit troops or policemen to a force that would wrest control of Haiti away from the military thugs who now control the impoverished nation. Trinidad, too, is thought to be ready to join such a multinational force.
The willingness of Caribbean governments to take part in a military invasion of Haiti - or help police it afterward - ups the pressure on the Clinton administration to act more aggressively to end that country's political crisis.
While Gray is pressing for tough new sanctions against the wealthy backers of Haiti's rogue military, some officials within the Clinton administration are opposed. They see these people as honest brokers who can be talked into throwing their support behind Aristide.
On this point, they are wrong.
The military that ousted Aristide is an instrument of the Haitian elite - the guardians of the privileges enjoyed by a small group of wealthy people at the expense of Haiti's poor masses. Caribbean countries understand this. That's why they have no faith in the incremental approach the United States is undertaking to undo the coup.
"This policy of imposing tougher and tougher sanctions does not seem to recognize the urgency of the problem," Turnquest complains. "This problem will not be resolved without military intervention."
Clinton administration officials are likely to hear more tough talk this week in Brazil where they are attending a meeting of the Organization of American States' general assembly. Representatives of Caricom, the group of 13 English-speaking nations and self-governing possessions in the Caribbean area, will urge the United States to use force sooner rather than later to end Haiti's political crisis. They will also make the point that if it comes to a fight, the United States will not have to go it alone.
"It would be wrong to ask the U.S. to intervene militarily without the Caricom nations participating to the full extent that we are able," Turnquest says.
And it's unlikely with such hawkish support that the Clinton administration will let Haiti's political crisis drag on much longer.
