13958: (Chamberlain) Haitian leader's supporters beat, chase youngsters (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Michael Deibert

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Several thousand supporters
of Haiti's President Jean-Bertrand Aristide hit anti-Aristide demonstrators
with metal bars and chased them away with stones and bottles in
Port-au-Prince on Tuesday.
     In the southwestern city of Petit Goave, an anti-Aristide protester
was shot and wounded during a demonstration there, private Radio Metropole
reported, but did not give details.
     The unrest, the latest in a series of demonstrations and
counter-protests to hit the impoverished Caribbean nation, took place on
the anniversary of the murder of a Haitian journalist whose death --
allegedly at the hands of Aristide supporters -- was one of the sparks for
growing opposition to the president.
     Hundreds of anti-Aristide marchers near the United States embassy in
downtown Port-au-Prince were stopped by a much larger crowd of young
Aristide supporters.
     "Now is not the time to be afraid, now is the time to be brave," said
one woman in the anti-Aristide crowd, as bottles shattered at her feet and
rocks were pelted at cars.
     "Aristide or death!" shouted one young man carrying a poster of the
president.
     Police did not intervene and no serious injuries were   reported.
     "This is democracy: People, including government supporters, may take
part in any march they want to," Secretary of State for Communications
Mario Dupuy told reporters.
     An anti-government march in the northern city of Cap Haitien was also
broken up, Radio Metropole reported.
     Members of the political opposition said they planned a general strike
on Wednesday in their efforts to oust Aristide, who has said he has no
plans to step down.
     A tide of protests has hit Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas,
recently as opposition and student groups decry a deteriorating economy and
what they charge is government corruption and Aristide's increasingly
authoritarian rule.
     Aristide, a former Catholic priest, rallied Haiti's poor in the
mid-1980s at the end a 30-year dictatorship and was elected president in
1990 only to be ousted in a coup months later.
     U.S. troops helped restore him to power in 1994 and he won a second
term in Nov. 2000, but since then he has been mired in a dispute over May
2000 legislative elections, which has stalled foreign aid for his 8 million
people as prices soar and the value of the country's currency, the gourde,
slumps.