Healthy Mothers and Healthy Babies Access to Care Act of 2003-Motion to Proceed

HEALTHY MOTHERS AND HEALTHY BABIES ACCESS TO CARE ACT OF 2003-MOTION TO PROCEED

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, at this very minute, there is an urgent crisis in America's own backyard, a crisis on the island nation of Haiti. I have come this afternoon to talk about that. I have been on the Senate floor many times in the past to talk about Haiti. I think I have traveled to Haiti 13 times since I have been in the Senate. I have talked before about the AIDS crisis there. I have talked about the horrible dehumanizing poverty. I have talked about the lack of clean water. I have talked about the food shortages. I have talked before about the children who are sick with AIDS and other diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis, children who have been orphaned when their parents die from AIDS, children who have little hope for a better future unless significant reforms are implemented and changes are made.

Today, I come to the Senate floor to talk about what everyone has seen in the news in the last several weeks, and that is something that is now dwarfing the poverty, the AIDS, and all the other problems, and that is the current crisis, the violence that has erupted across this island nation.

The chaotic and dangerous situation in Haiti right now is anything but a surprise. The fact is that a crisis has been looming there since at least before Christmas. In January, in an opinion piece that I wrote for the Miami Herald, I urged Haitian President Aristide to reach an agreement with the legitimate opposition groups, the political groups, to reach wholesale political change and reform. In that opinion piece, I urged him to pull back his own gangs of thugs and to tell them to stop their violence. I suggested then that President Aristide had within his own power the ability to avert further chaos and inevitable disaster at the hands of insurgent groups by ending the political impasse with the opposition and by creating a government that the international community could, in fact, support.

I am pleased that just this weekend President Aristide agreed to the proposal of the U.S. administration, our administration's proposal to end the political stalemate. It is imperative that the legitimate political opposition groups in Haiti now accept the terms of this agreement. As I speak this afternoon, these groups are considering this proposal. But I must say, time is of the essence. I believe our administration's proposal, based on other Caribbean nations' earlier proposal, is a reasonable offer and one that has the greatest chance of bringing about an immediate end to the bloodshed.

Members of the Senate need to understand that, really, there are three forces at play here. There is the Aristide government; there is the legitimate political opposition in the country; and then there are the thugs, and we can use no other term to describe them but the thugs who are trying to overthrow the Government.

Let there be no mistake about it. These are not democrats, with a small "d." They care not for democracy. When we talk about the political opposition we mean just that, the political opposition, the legitimate political opposition in Haiti. It is not associated with these thugs.

So we call upon them today, the political opposition, to agree to the proposal made by the U.S. Government. President Aristide has agreed to this. We ask, and believe it is clearly in the best interests of Haiti, for the political opposition to agree to it as well.

This agreement includes the setting up of a broad-based advisory council to Aristide's government. It also includes the appointment of a new Prime Minister. That is very significant. Further, it includes the disarming of gangs aligned with Aristide's Lavalas Family Party.

I urge the opposition groups to accept this because, quite candidly, this proposal is the best hope for creating a coalition government that can stop the violence and a coalition government that can be accepted by the international community and can be respected on the world stage.

The fact is, unless agreement is reached and unless the violence stops, there will be serious consequences for our hemisphere, for Haiti, and, yes, for the United States. We do not know what is going to happen in Haiti, but as we think about what our response might be if in fact settlement cannot be reached or if in fact a settlement is reached and the violence continues, we need to keep in mind a few basic facts.

First, Haiti is in our neighborhood and what happens in our neighborhood affects the United States. Haiti is a nation that lies only about 800 miles from our shores and is, therefore, less than a 1½ hour flight from Miami.

Second, amazingly there are at least 20,000 U.S. citizens living in Haiti today. Let me repeat that. The official estimate is that there are at least 20,000 U.S. citizens living in Haiti today. These are missionaries; these are doctors; these are nurses and other U.S. citizens. No one knows for sure how many U.S. citizens are actually down there. They are, so to speak, embedded all throughout the country.

The reality is that an awful lot of humanitarian workers are simply not going to flee. They are not going to leave this Nation no matter what our advisories say. They are there simply to help the people of Haiti and they are going to stay. They are going to stay to help the children. They are going to stay to help the elderly. They are going to stay to help the sick. They are not going to abandon the people. Therefore, we have an obligation as a country to protect them and we need to be concerned about them.

Furthermore, if the violence does not end, then we in the United States will once again be seeing boats swollen with Haitians, risking their lives for the chance of a better life. Our Coast Guard will be out there having to stop them and we will be seeing them floating toward Miami and the Florida shores.

No one knows what the future will hold. We have watched on the news. We have read in the newspapers as these thugs, these rebels have taken over most of the main cities of Haiti-all of the main cities of Haiti, except Port-au-Prince. No one knows what will happen next. I said the hope is there will be agreement reached between the opposition, legitimate political opposition and the Aristide government. But if we assume the violence will continue, if we assume these thugs, these insurgents do what they say they are going to do and they move toward Port-au-Prince, no one can predict what will happen. But it is certainly not out of the realm of possibility that there will be a bloodbath in Port-au-Prince.

There is no army. President Aristide, tragically-we have seen the police corrupted. There is no real police force of which to speak. So what Aristide has done is he has armed the gangs of Port-au-Prince. So there are arms everywhere in Port-au-Prince. They are the ones who would be there to "defend" Port-au-Prince.

So you would have certainly the potential of the gangs of Port-au-Prince with their guns versus the insurgents coming in, and the people who would be the victims would be the children, the women, and the elderly would be caught in that tragic crossfire. That very well could be the scene that we will see unfold in front of us on CNN, on the network news.

Those are things we need to contemplate in the days ahead as we think about what our reaction might have to be. I believe our administration has taken the right steps. Mr. Roger Noriega, representing the administration, went to Haiti and made this proposal. It was the right thing to do. It was a good proposal.

Haiti is out of time. I, again, urge the opposition leaders, the legitimate political opposition leaders to accept the administration's proposal. It is clearly in Haiti's national interest. If the opposition doesn't accept the proposal without question, the situation will spiral out of control very quickly. It may, in fact, spiral out of control anyway, but clearly it will spiral out of control if it is not accepted. If it does spiral out of control, the United States needs to be prepared to act in our own national self-interest.

I yield the floor.