


                 Grand Turk Island Gets $2 Million And The
                  American People Get a Grand Lie.

                  


       ...in Washington, where members of Congress were beginning
       to gripe about the cost of Haitian aid, no one breathed a word
       about the deal.

       In fact, at a press briefing in July, William Gray, President
       Clinton's special adviser on Haiti, was asked whether any
       countries had been offered financial inducements to accept the
       refugees.

      "No," said Gray, who signed the agreement with the Turks and
       Caicos, a copy of which was cheerfully made available in Grand
       Turk.

       Even as he spoke, the United States was transferring $2 million
       to Misick's government. And back in Grand Turk, the people were
       celebrating.
 

                  


The Oregonian
Portland, Oregon
Tuesday, November 1, 1994


         Caribbean Islet Wakes From Dream of Refugee Bonanza

              - The Turks and Caicos Islands expected
                to gain millions of dollars if a Haitian
                refuge camp went in, but it never did.

                           by Joe Hallinan
                        Newhouse News Service

    GRAND TURK, Turks and Caicos Islands - A few months ago, when the
United States needed safe havens for Haitian refugees, this tiny
British dependency was the first to sign up.

    And for good reason: The United States promised millions in
benefits to these cactus-covered islands, from remodeling a
dilapidated airport, to helping it finance a resort hotel, to giving
$2 million in cold, hard cash.

    The deal was so good the islands' chief minister bragged that
they "were making out like bandits."

    But no one is bragging now. Haiti's president is back in power,
no refugee has ever set foot on the islands, and the expected boom
has evaporated.

    Merchants who hoped to capitalize on the gain face ruin. Hotel
owners gaze at empty rooms. The only buildings left at the refugee
site are outhouses.

    "People are despondent," said Oswald Skippings, a former chief
minister of this 40-island chain. Of the promised aid, he said, only
the $2 million has been delivered.

    But the experience in Turks and Caicos is about more than one
obscure country's tough luck. It also shows how far the Clinton
administration was willing to go to buy support for the Haitian
refugees.

    The aid offered to the Turks and Caicos, for instance, worked out
to about $1,500 per person - a fantastic sum in a country where the
average annual income is about $4,500. As one legislator pout it,
"How can we refuse?"

    Most of the money was to have been spent in Grand Turk, the
capital, a derelict strip of land in a forgotten corner of the
Caribbean 130 miles north of Haiti.

    The country's own tourist maps omit the island, as do airline
schedules. The only attraction is scuba diving. But because there are
no direct flights to Grand Turk, divers must hitch a flight from
nearby islands on an aging six-seater flown by a pilot named Chappie.

    Once on Grand Turk, their only entertainment comes from Mitch and
Dave, two scuba-diving musicians who perform a melody of '70s hits,
including their own version of "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown."

    "It's boring," complained Gene Beck, a former Marine who, for
reasons he has a hard time explaining, bought and now operates one of
the country's six hotels. None of them is full.

    There is a broken-down dock, a crumbling airstrip, a harbor so
shallow that ships can unload only at high tide. Junked cars litter
the landscape. Donkeys wander the streets, chickens peck in the dirt,
and dogs lounge in the shade.

    A gallon of milk costs $10, and unemployment is thought to be
somewhere around 25 percent.

    "To be frank, I don't know how some people make a living," said
Derek Taylor, a slight, goateed man who leads the opposition party
members - all four of them.

    But four months ago, opportunity, in the form of human misery,
presented itself to the Turks and Caicos. The first of more than
16,000 Haitian refugees had begun taking to the sea in rickety boats,
and many of them drowned. The Clinton administration was desperately
seeking places outside the United States to put them.

    Grand Turk had just the spot: 40 acres of uninhabited, partially
swamp- covered land on the island's southern tip.

    In return, Grand Turk wanted help in attracting tourists, the
country's leading source of income, along with foreign aid. To do
that, it needed two things: a decent airport and a resort hotel.

    "That," said Robert Hall, their country's No. 2 elected official,
"was the key to Grand Turk."

    That and a little score-settling with the United States. The
country's chief minister, Washington Misick, thought that the
islands' 12,000 people had never been treated fairly by the North
Americans.

    "In our dealings with them in the past, in my estimation at
least, the quid pro quo was never quite equitable," he explained to
the local paper. "And if we were to enter into any kind of
arrangement, the scales must, most definitely, have to be tipped in
our favor."

    And tipped they were. On June 18, [1994] after three weeks of
negotiations, the Turks and Caicos came away with a deal that Hall
called a "god-send."

    Among other things, the United States agreed to pay the islands
$2 million in cash; to resurface the airport runway (estimated cost:
$4 million); to bring the airport's passenger terminal up to
international standards ($1 million); and to help the island find
money to build a resort hotel.

    It also agreed to install water, sewer and electrical lines to
the refugee camp good enough to enhance the prospects that the site
could easily accommodate a hotel, once the Haitians were gone. On top
of that, the United States promised to build new roads to and from
the future hotel site, demolish an old, unsightly jetty nearby and
install a state-of- the art loading dock ($1.6 million).

    It even promised to give the Turks and Caicos two patrol boats,
which the islands could use to intercept fishermen who poach in thelr
waters.

    In short, Grand Turk would get a multimillion-dollar makeover,
paid for by U.S. taxpayers. It was, in the words of the chief
minister a "win-win situation."

    But in Washington, where members of Congress were beginning to
gripe about the cost of Haitian aid, no one breathed a word about the
deal.

    In fact, at a press briefing in July, William Gray, President
Clinton's special adviser on Haiti, was asked whether any countries
had been offered financial inducements to accept the refugees.

    "No," said Gray, who signed the agreement with the Turks and
Caicos, a copy of which was cheerfully made available in Grand Turk.

    "There are no financial inducements. We have been working with
those countries. We have urged them to help address this refugee
problem. And the United States has taken a lead in terms of dealing
with the cost factors. However, there were not any quid pro quos."

    Even as he spoke, the United States was transferring $2 million
to Misick's government. And back in Grand Turk, the people were
celebrating.

    "That was a good `Christmas' down here, man. Things were jumpin,"
said Dennis "Dutchie" Williams, owner of Dutchie Car Rental.

    Hundreds of U.S. soldiers had begun swarming on Grand Turk in
June, clearing land for the Haitian camp by day and spending their
money at night. A few rented the pride of Dutchie's fleet, a van, for
eight solid weeks. He was so happy, he said, he took them all fishing
for free.

    "This is the best this island ever was," said Beck, the hotel
owner. "We're the only place on the island with pizzas, and we ran
pizza every night. They pizza-ed us to death."

    "People looked at this like a dream come true," said Cheryl
Astwood Tull, a telephone company employee. She would take her 6-year
old daughter, who was born in Miami, to watch U.S. ships come in.

    "She was so excited. She would wave and say, "There's my
people!'"

    Like many others on the island, Astwood Tull and her 52-year-old
mother began renovating their homes to rent to the 140 American
civilians expected to come to help administer the camp.

    She said they were told that they would be given only two or
three days' notice of the Americans' arrival, "so everybody was
hurrying."

    Her mother ran out and bought a new water pump and a bedroom set
and painted the house inside and out spending about $4,000 in all.

    "They had us going like that for five or six weeks," said Astwood
Tull.

    But as the weeks turned into months, her hopes turned to doubt.
Her mother fell ill, went into and out of a coma and then died.

    "When she came out of her coma," Astwood Tull recalled, "she
asked me, 'Have the Americans done anything?' And I said no."

    And the Americans never did. After months of delay, they
announced in late summer that no Haitians would be coming to Grand
Turk after all.

    The camp was closed, the tents were folded, and the Americans
left. No runways were repaved, no ramps were installed. Like
Cinderella's stagecoach, Grand Turk had turned back into a pumpkin.

    Back at Dutchie Car Rental, where things were jumping, Dutchie is
forlorn.

    "Things dead," he said, shaking his head.


                              - end -


