The United States and Jamaica agreed Wednesday on arrangements under which the Caribbean nation will provide facilities to process requests for political asylum from Haitian boat people.
State Department spokeswoman Christine Shelly said, "The governments of Jamaica and the United States have reached agreement in principle on interviewing Haitian boat migrants in Jamaican territorial waters to give these unfortunate people an additional opportunity to present their claims to refugee status."Shelly said the two governments were now discussing a memorandum of understanding that would govern use of an anchorage site in Jamaican territorial waters for this purpose. An agreement was expected soon.
Once the new arrangements were in place, Haitians picked up at sea would be brought to ships anchored off Jamaica for interviews with U.S. immigration officials. A United Nations official would also be present.
"Those who demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution if they are sent back to Haiti will be resettled in the United States or other countries," Shelly said.
"Those who are found to have no claim to political refugee status will be returned to Haiti."
In Kingston, Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson said the agreement was not expected to last more than six months.
A senior White House official, meanwhile, said the United States believed it was also close to gaining approval from the Caribbean islands known as the Turks and Caicos for additional help in processing Haitian refugees.
The British-owned Turks and Caicos are a group of 30 small islands near the southeast end of the Bahamas.
U.S. officials have been searching for a Caribbean country to help process asylum requests for the past three weeks, since Clinton announced a change in the U.S. policy of sending all boat people straight back to Haiti.
Clinton was under heavy pressure from black activists and human rights groups to abandon the policy of forcible return because of a wave of political murders of suspected dissidents and their families in Haiti.
Supporters of ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide were in particular danger. Aristide was forced into exile in September 1991 by a military coup.
Jamaican officials have said the 1,000-bed U.S. naval hospital ship Comfort will be anchored in or near Kingston harbor to process Haitian refugees picked up at sea.
The Comfort left the port of Norfolk, Va., Tuesday.