DRUG TRAFFICKERS FIND HAITI A HOSPITABLE PORT

CHEVALIER, Haiti - The riches that arrived in this tiny village came from
the sea - not in fisherman's nets but in an abandoned speedboat that washed
up last year stocked with dozens of cellophane-wrapped bricks of Colombian
cocaine.

"Everyone else was grabbing it, so I took some," said Vital, a young
fisherman. I gave it to my father, and the men came from Port-au-Prince to
buy it for a lot of money."

The cargo taught this southern coastal village what Haitian police and
government officials have known for years: The drug trade is one of the few
ways in Haiti to amass a fortune.

This chaotic, impoverished country has been a bustling crossroads for
moving Colombian cocaine to the United States for at least 20 years. But
since the departure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Feb 29,
investigators, diplomats and government officials describe emerging
evidence of a state so riddled with drug money that it touched even the
presidential palace, through Aristide's chief of security. What is still
unanswered is whether those links reached Aristide himself. A senior
Western diplomat who has been briefed on a federal investigation under way
in Miami into drug ties in the Aristide government said an indictment of
Aristide might be "a couple of months away."

Aristide denies any corruption, but the accusations against him represent
the bottoming out of a long ambivalent relationship United States.

The Clinton administration used force to usher Aristide back to power in
1994 after he was ousted in a coup. This year, as Aristide faced a
rebellion, the Bush administration provided him with a jet to leave. "We're
glade to see him go," Vice President Dick Cheney said.

Aristide claimed to have been kidnapped, and his supporters and others say
the drug accusations are intended to intimidate the former president and
discourage him from trying to reclaim his presidency by saying he was
illegally removed.

"It seems very much to be a politically driven enterprise," Robert Maguire,
director of programs in international affairs at Trinity College in
Washington and an expert on Haiti. "Drug traffickers in Haiti has been
around a very long time. So why now? I think they may be using this as
leverage against him to marginalize his voice."