BY PETER WALLSTEN

Lingering questions over what role the White House played in the Haiti uprising -- and whether race was a factor in sending back hundreds of fleeing refugees -- could haunt President Bush as he tries to win Florida again this year and secure reelection.

Leading Democrats, including presidential front-runner John Kerry, moved quickly Sunday in the wake of Haiti President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's resignation to condemn Bush -- painting the situation as a foreign policy failure by a president whose reelection campaign is based largely on national security.

''The United States should have been an honest broker for nonviolence,'' Kerry told The Herald in a telephone interview from New York, where he was campaigning for the Tuesday Democratic primary. ``This is one more indication of how the administration comes late to an issue, very ideologically colored in their approach, and allows things to get out of control as they have elsewhere in the world.''

`DOUBLE STANDARD'

Kerry also described the Bush administration's policy of blocking Haitians from fleeing the chaos while giving greater access to Cubans escaping communism as a ''double standard,'' but he stopped short of critics who call the Haitian policy racist.

Democrats believe the issue presents an increasingly complicated political problem for Bush and his national security team -- especially as the administration justifies ousting a dictator in Iraq in the name of fostering democracy, while it stood by as armed rebels forced out a democratically elected president only hundreds of miles off Florida's shores.

Some Democrats went further to frame the debate about Bush's priorities, accusing the administration of fueling a coup to overthrow a legitimate president.

''The conspiracy theory is alive and well as it relates to their hand in this,'' said U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Miami Democrat who is Kerry's Florida campaign chairman and who confronted Bush on Haiti last week along with other members of the Congressional Black Caucus. ``This is going to be front and center in the campaign, just like Iraq will be.''

There were signs, however, that some Democrats were being careful to sound more moderate in anticipation of stories emerging about Aristide's problems in office.

Kerry, a Massachusetts senator who has come under fire from Republicans as waffling on positions, seemed to back away somewhat from his charge during a nationally televised debate last week that the White House had been ''engaged in very manipulative and wrongful ways.'' He said Sunday that the administration was ''disengaged,'' and that simply allowing the rebels to move freely gave them ''veto power'' over any resolution to the problem in Haiti.

Asked if he believed the U.S. government engineered the overthrow of Aristide, Kerry said: ``I don't have evidence of it personally. I've heard stories of it. I don't believe anything without evidence.''

But, he added, ``There may be some legitimate questions.''

Kerry also was careful to note that Aristide ''had a lot of problems,'' but he stood by his earlier assessment that the Bush administration held ''a theological and an ideological hatred'' of the former Catholic priest.

''It goes back to the liberation theology that he preached earlier in his career,'' he said, referring to a liberal form of Catholicism that emphasizes helping the poor. ``It's part of the right's attitude about Aristide.''

Haiti is an emotional subject in two vote-rich states, New York and Florida, where tens of thousands of immigrants have settled and remain in touch with family and friends back home.

Republicans are most concerned about the political fallout in Florida, where Bush won the state in 2000 by just 537 votes, and where the Bush campaign can ill afford a high-profile crisis such as the arrival of a massive number of refugees.

GOP REACTION

GOP campaign aides on Sunday reacted to the assertions by Kerry and others with outrage, charging that the Democratic front-runner was trying to use the issue to divert attention from his own inconsistencies on the Iraq war and other foreign policy topics. ''This is reckless and irresponsible politics,'' said Bush campaign spokesman Reed Dickens.

Still, an election-year refugee crisis in Florida is particularly dangerous for the GOP because it would embroil the president's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, in touchy decisions over how to treat people entering the state -- and whether Haitians fleeing chaos would be entitled to similar special treatment granted Cubans who flee communism. Haitian Americans tend to vote Democratic, while Cuban Americans are one of the Republican Party's most important voting blocs in the state.

The issue is certain to arise during a major civil rights march planned for Tuesday in Tallahassee to coincide with the governor's State of the State speech -- the same day Kerry arrives for a set of major rallies in Florida essentially to kick off his primary and general-election campaigns in the state.

While Haitian Americans remain a relatively small voting bloc in the state, the images of black people escaping the chaos of the impoverished Caribbean nation and then being returned by the U.S. Coast Guard could inflame racial tensions at a time civil rights groups are marshaling forces for a big turnout against Bush in the November election, Democratic strategists and leaders said Sunday.