Nobody seems to want to give Duvalier asylum

Press, 10 February 1986, Page 6

Nobody seems to want to give Duvalier asylum

NZPA-Reuter Talloires Haiti’s former Presi-dent-for-Life, Jean-Claude Duvalier, waited yesterday in a luxury Alpine hotel converted from a medieval monastery as the French Government tried to find a foreign refuge for its unwanted guest. Mr Duvalier, who fled his country aboard a United States Air Force Star Lifter transport on Friday, spent his first full day in exile surrounded by police at the four-star lakeside hotel, I’Abbaye. He is accompanied by his wife, Michele, and a 22-member entourage. The French Government describes his stay as a transit stop and says he must leave the country within eight days. “We are looking for a country of permanent asylum. This cannot be France as we do not wish to prolong the delay,” the Prime Minister, Mr Laurent Fabius, said yesterday.

"It was in order to avoid a bloodbath that we enabled Monsieur Duvalier to leave his country,” Mr Fabius said. France thoroughly condemned the brutality of his regime. But efforts by France’s Socialist Government to rid itself of its embarrassing guest before legisla-

tive elections next month have apparently so far made little headway. Gabon, Cameroon, Switzerland, Greece, and Spain have ruled out giving asylum to Mr Duvalier.

Speculation on a possible refuge focused yesterday on French-speak-ing African countries. But reluctance to take Mr Duvalier was summed up by Gabon’s semi-official newspaper, “L’Union”:, “Gabon is not a rubbish tin.”

Mr Duvalier and members of his party have not been seen in public in Talloires since their arrival.

Officials in the town of 960 people say they fear the entourage may be settling in for a long stay at I’Abbaye, an eleventhcentury Benedictine monastery, which is now one of Haute Savoie’s most exclusive hotels and noted for its fine cuisine.

Police carrying automatic weapons sealed off a compound deep in snow around the three-storey stone building and even duck-hunters were rebuked for passing too close with their shot-guns. The police allowed in only hotel staff and delivery vans, which, local people said, were carrying furniture and videorecorders.

All other guests have been moved out of the 50room hotel. A desk clerk reached by telephone said that all rooms were booked “indefinitely.”

“Monsieur Duvalier is here for eight days, but is this the same eight days as Monsieur Jean-Bedel Bokassa?” asked the Mayor of Talloires, Mr Joseph Burdeyron. Bokassa, the former Emperor of the Central African Empire, was given “temporary” asylum in France in 1979 and has not left the country since. Like Bokassa, Mr Duvalier has several homes in France, Including an eighteenth-century chateau outside Paris and a villa in Nice.

Mr Burdeyron compared France’s decision to accept Mr Duvalier with South American nations’ willingness to give exile to Nazi war criminals after 1945.

. The French Government has tried to deflect such criticism by distancing itself from Mr Duvalier and the United Statesbacked plan for his removal from Haiti to make way for a six-man mili-tary-civilian commission. “It is not really France’s responsibility,” Mr Fabius said.