Let Haitians Solve Their Crisis, U.N. Chief Urges : Caribbean: Report was delayed four days. Officials deny it conflicts with Clinton call for more sanctions.

UNITED NATIONS —  Despite the Clinton Administration proposal for tougher sanctions on Haiti, U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali issued a pessimistic report Wednesday that urged outsiders to take a more passive role and allow Haitians to work out a solution to the crisis themselves.

But the report to the U.N. General Assembly, dated Friday and released after a delay of four days, was evidently written before the Administration completed a review of its Haitian policy and changed course. American diplomats insisted that the report did not mean that Boutros-Ghali opposes the new American call for intensifying sanctions.

“Secretariat officials have indicated to us,” a U.S. official said, “that it was written before and that they have no quarrel with our present sanctions resolution.” He predicted the Security Council will pass the resolution by the beginning of next week.

U.N. officials also were quick to deny any conflict between the United States and Boutros-Ghali over renewed sanctions.

“The report was written and approved by the secretary general a week ago,” said Alvaro de Soto, Boutros-Ghali’s special adviser for political affairs. “It is an update on developments and should not be taken as a policy statement. It wasn’t intended to be a divergence from anything the Security Council might do.”

But the report suggested that the time has come for the international community to step back. Boutros-Ghali wrote that, over the months, “the international community’s role changed gradually from that of mediator between parties to that of sole agent responsible for finding and implementing a solution to the deadlock.”

“This new role for the international community is prejudicial,” he wrote. “Some see it as compromising the international community’s neutrality and thus weakening its ability to instill confidence and lead the parties to a vital compromise.”

Instead of negotiating and compromising, he said, parties in the conflict are looking “to the representatives of the international community for a solution that should not be inherently dependent on them.”

He recommended that “a more specifically Haitian solution be found” with the two parties, supported by the United Nations, resuming “an effective role in this process.”

But the American official said the Boutros-Ghali report reflected a theory, discarded by the Administration only a week ago, that the best tactic for ending the Haiti crisis was pressure on deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to compromise with the military and police officers who overthrew him.

In its new strategy, the Administration has decided to transfer pressure to the military and police commanders, demanding that they resign and allow the return of Aristide to Haiti and the presidency.

Senior American officials said Clinton has asked aides to suggest concrete options for use of U.S. military power in Haiti, although he still believes stepped-up economic sanctions can force the military regime there to step down without any use of force.

The officials maintain that Clinton’s warning on Tuesday that force is an option was more than saber-rattling. “The President is wrestling with that question . . . with a very high degree of seriousness,” a close aide said.

Although contemplating the use of military power, the aide went on, Clinton does not believe he would have to use it.

In his report, Boutros-Ghali, proposing a year’s extension for deployment of U.N. human rights observers in Haiti, offered a grim survey of the plight of political opponents there.

In the Port-au-Prince area, he said, “the number of murders remained at an alarming level . . . with extrajudicial executions, suspicious deaths and enforced disappearances.” In some cases, he said, members of the armed forces and their associates were the culprits.

Boutros-Ghali also reported the existence of secret detention centers in the Port-au-Prince area and “very large numbers of arbitrary arrests, illegal detentions, abductions.” He said victims were often handcuffed, blindfolded, carted away and beaten before their release “in very poor physical and mental condition.”

The United Nations believes, he said, “that the aim of these practices is to obtain information about the members and activities of popular organizations and to terrorize the popular movement in favor of the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.”

The American-sponsored resolution would impose a near total trade embargo on Haiti and prohibit the military and police officers and their families from traveling outside the country or using funds now in foreign accounts.

In Haiti on Wednesday, the lower house of Parliament introduced a measure to bypass Aristide and create an emergency government, the Associated Press reported. If approved, the measure would head to a divided Senate, which must consider it before lawmakers begin a one-month recess Monday.

Times staff writer Doyle McManus in Washington contributed to this report.