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09/29/2005:

"Rice Visits Haiti Ahead of Elections"

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Sept. 27 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited the poorest nation in the Americas today to urge Haitians to vote in the first elections since Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted last year and spirited into exile on an American military jet.

In a visit to the presidential palace and then a voter-registration office just a block outside its walls, Ms. Rice directly addressed the Haitian people, telling them that "this is a time when Haiti can have a new start." But she also warned the current interim government that in a country with a long history of voter fraud, intimidation and authoritarian rule, Haiti's leader must move far more aggressively to guarantee the integrity of the presidential and parliamentary election on Nov. 20, and a peaceful transfer of power on Feb. 7.

"These elections must be open and inclusive and fair," she said, standing next to Haiti's interim prime minister, Gérard Latortue.

Ms. Rice's visit here was her first as secretary of state, and her six hours on the ground here considerably more peaceful than the visit by her predecessor, Colin L. Powell, last December. As he met Haitian leaders in the same palace, gunfire erupted outside, and ensuing gun battles between gangs and peacekeepers, most of whom are from Brazil, left three Haitians dead and at least nine injured.

American officials traveling with Ms. Rice and a delegation of five members of Congress said they were encouraged that violence had tapered off a bit in recent weeks. But American officials took extraordinary precautions, helicoptering Ms. Rice the few miles from the airport to the presidential palace rather than risk driving her downtown, on roads where kidnappings and shootings are still a frequent occurrence. Here guards openly brandished automatic weapons from the moment she landed.

More than 2.6 million people have registered to vote, and Ms. Rice talked to a few of them today as they obtained national identity cards and used computer systems put in place by the Organization of American States to verify their identities by scanning their fingerprints and creating digital images of their signatures.

But the registration center, in a health clinic, was an island of quiet in a city coping with collapsed housing, deep poverty, periodic gunfire and suspicions of the United States, which once supported Mr. Aristide and then encouraged him to go when he was forced from office in February, 2004.
nytimes.com

Now there's some revisionist history for you.