PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Former President Carter was met by insulting graffiti and a suspicious, antagonistic government when he arrived here yesterday for what he said is an effort to strengthen the faltering Haitian electoral system.
Mr. Carter told reporters he had been invited to check the progress of the process he helped start in September when he negotiated the removal of the military regime that had overthrown President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991.
But the Aristide government was less than welcoming. Aristide aides made clear their feeling that his visit is an intrusion by declining to send even a junior protocol officer to welcome him at the airport.
The aides also denied that he was asked to visit, saying, "Carter simply informed us he was coming. We felt we had to invite him to dinner, but that is all. He won't even get a gift" -- a customary courtesy extended to official guests.
Mr. Carter was greeted with widespread insults painted on walls throughout the capital.
"Jimmy Carter is a false democrat," said one of the less offensive slogans scrawled on the wall surrounding the Presidential Palace. "Go home, Carter," said another.
Aristide aides denied that the graffiti was government-sponsored inspired. But they chortled over the anti-Carter messages and gave directions to where the most insulting ones were painted.
Mr. Carter's cold reception, Aristide aides said, results from the fear that he came to help Father Aristide's political opponents.
tTC "Carter is here not because he's worried about the electoral system," said one Haitian official, "but because he thinks Aristide will overwhelm the opposition."