18325: (Chamberlain) 14 police slain in Haiti shootout, rebels say (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Rebels said they killed 14
policemen on Saturday in a shootout with the authorities who tried to
retake control of Haiti's fourth largest city from an anti-government
group, the rebels told local radio stations.
     Journalists at the scene said the firefight erupted when a police
caravan tried to enter Gonaives to take it back from an armed band that
took control of the city on Friday and is demanding that embattled
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide quit.
     Local radio reports quoted rebels as saying 14 policemen were killed
in the fighting with members of the Front for Aristide's Departure in the
port city about 105 miles (170 km) from the capital, Port-au-Prince.
     It was not immediately possible to confirm the death toll, and there
were no reports of rebel casualties.
     There were conflicting reports over which side controlled Gonaives.
     The crisis in Gonaives has come on top of months of sometimes violent
demonstrations in Port-au-Prince and other cities in the impoverished
Caribbean nation of 8 million people, mostly organized by Aristide
opponents calling on him to quit.
     The president's political foes accuse him of corruption and
mismanagement. But the former Roman Catholic priest, once widely hailed as
a leader of the country's fledgling democracy, also now faces a serious
threat from armed opponents.
     In the capital, Aristide told a crowd in the capital's slum of Cite
Soleil that police were entering Gonaives to regain order, and said the
government would "disarm the terrorists."
     Government spokesman Mario Dupuy said on local radio stations that the
police were once again in control of Gonaives.  But rebel spokesman Wynter
Etienne told radio stations that his forces maintained control.
     Gunmen from the Front for Aristide's Departure stormed the Gonaives
police station on Thursday and the Red Cross said at least seven people
were killed in a shoot-out there. On Friday, the group, whose members
number several hundred, burned down the mayor's home and released scores of
prisoners.
     As police and the front exchanged fire in one part of town on
Saturday, thousands of civilians demonstrated in another, calling for
Aristide's departure, journalists on the scene said.
     Local radio stations reported that the streets of Gonaives were calm
at midday and said civilians celebrated as police officers fled the city on
foot. Members of the opposition front had barricaded the road out of the
city with overturned vehicles, branches and boulders, according to
witnesses.
     In Port-au-Prince, Aristide was celebrating the third anniversary of
his return to power in 2001 after re-election with thousands of supporters,
who then marched through the streets proclaiming their support for him.
     "This was democracy that we made. It's anarchy that they have made,"
said Rubens Sofor, one of the hundreds of Aristide supporters filing down
winding streets toward the pro-government demonstration.
     Gonaives' front, formerly known as the Cannibal Army, had once been a
militantly pro-Aristide group, notorious for its attacks on government
critics.
     But after the murder last September of the gang's leader, which his
family accused Aristide of ordering, the group turned violently against the
president. Dozens of people have since been killed in violence between the
front and the police in recent months.
     Gonaives, whose population was estimated at 200,000 before many
residents fled the violence last fall, is commonly called the City of
Independence, as it was where Haitian independence from France was declared
in 1804.
     Aristide became Haiti's first democratically elected president in 1991
but was promptly ousted in a military coup. He was returned to Haiti by
U.S.-led forces in 1994 and was re-elected in 2000. His once massive
support has dwindled in recent years, but he has said he will serve out his
term to 2006.