The Haitian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide , marked the end of his three-year exile in Washington with a warm White House send-off yesterday.
President Clinton bade farewell to the Haitian leader at an honour ceremony in the Rose Garden with the words 'Bon Chance, Haiti Thomas,' the traditional, personalised way of referring to Haiti.
Declaring Father Aristide 's return home a victory for freedom, Mr Clinton hailed 'the end of one stage of a long and difficult journey and the beginning of a new era of hope for the people of Haiti'.
The exiled president said the words US policymakers longed to hear, reiterating his slogan, 'No to violence, no to vengeance, yes to reconciliation.'
He said that, as a musician, he looked forward to singing his message once back in his own country. Fr Aristide also invited the US president to visit Port-au-Prince.
At the ceremony President Clinton signed an executive order formally lifting the US embargo against Haiti. The main beneficiaries of the move are 600 Haitian businessmen who supported the 1991 coup, whose Dollars 79 million US assets will be unfrozen. President Aristide had pressed for the sanctions to be removed to encourage Haiti's elite to re-invest in the country.
US officials yesterday defended the smooth departure they had afforded the military junta, granting Lieutenant-General Raoul Cedras and his former chief of staff, Philippe Biamby, an easy future, initially in Panama.
The Clinton administration released the former coup leaders' assets and agreed to rent three properties owned by Gen Cedras.
The deal will allow the military strongman to collect millions of dollars he accrued during his regime, as well as ensuring him a guaranteed rental income at US taxpayers' expense. The generals are thought to have amassed up to Dollars 100 million each.
A US jet also took 23 relatives and associates of the two soldiers to Miami, after the state and justice departments agreed to grant them entry to the United States. The move has been attacked as at odds with the long-standing American policy of denying asylum to Haitian migrants