18629: Dorcilien: Dominican Commandos Gird Haitian Rebels (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Nod Dorcilien <ndorcilien@yahoo.com>

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&e=18&u=/ap/20040215/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/haiti_uprising_2

World - AP Latin America

Dominican Commandos Gird Haitian Rebels

46 minutes ago

By IAN JAMES, Associated Press Writer

GONAIVES, Haiti - Haitian rebels seeking to topple the
president brought in reinforcements from the
neighboring Dominican Republic, including the exiled
former leader of 1980s death squads and a former
police chief accused of fomenting a coup, witnesses
said Saturday, as police fled two more northern towns.


Reuters

 	Haitian Rebels Take Over Another Town

Twenty commandos arrived, led by Louis-Jodel
Chamblain, a former Haitian soldier who headed army
death squads in 1987 and a militia known as the Front
for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, or FRAPH,
which killed and maimed dozens of people between 1992
and 1994.



Guy Philippe, a former police chief who fled to the
Dominican Republic after being accused by the Haitian
government of fomenting a coup in 2002, also arrived
in Gonaives to help the rebels prepare for an expected
showdown with the government. It was unclear when the
volunteers arrived.



Witnesses reached by telephone said the men were
working with rebels in Gonaives but were massing in
Saint-Michel de l'Atalaye, about 28 miles to the east.




The rebels launched a bloody uprising nine days ago
from Gonaives, 70 miles northwest of Port-au-Prince
and Haiti's fourth-largest city, seeking President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide's ouster. Some 50 people have
been killed.



"Chamblain and his men are taking advantage of the
situation to further their own ends, ends that would
mean the perversion of the democratic movement," said
Himler Rebu, an opposition leader and former army
colonel who led a failed coup attempt in 1989 against
Lt. Gen. Prosper Avril.



He warned the international community that the longer
Aristide stays in power, the harder it will be to
restore order in Haiti.



Discontent has grown in this Caribbean country of 8
million people since Aristide's party swept flawed
legislative elections in 2000 and international donors
froze millions of dollars in aid.



However, Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web
sites) said Friday the United States and other nations
"will accept no outcome that ... attempts to remove
the elected president of Haiti."



The United States sent 20,000 troops to Haiti in 1994
to end a bloody military dictatorship, restore
Aristide and halt an exodus of refugees to Florida.



Washington says it plans no new military intervention
in the current crisis.



Rebel roadblocks have halted most food and fuel
shipments since the unrest began. Emergency supplies
of flour, cooking oil and other basics are projected
to run out in four days in northern areas, where
roadblocks are guarded by rebels who have seized
Gonaives and burned police stations in more than a
dozen other towns.



Nearby, rebels blocked the road outside Trou-du-Nord
leading to the Dominican border at Ouanaminthe.
Merchants turned back, saying the barricade of
boulders and cars has cut supplies coming from the
Dominican Republic, which shares the island of
Hispaniola with Haiti.



U.N. representative Adama Guindo appealed to police
and rebels to open a "humanitarian corridor."
Barricades have blocked deliveries to some 268,000
people dependent on food aid in northern Haiti.



Rebels also have retaken the town of Dondon and burned
dozens of houses of Aristide supporters, according to
witnesses who fled to the nearby northern port of
Cap-Haitien. Police retook the town Feb. 9, when
Aristide militants torched nine opposition houses.



Overnight, rebels also attacked police in Saint
Suzanne, some 20 miles southwest of Cap-Haitien,
according to witnesses reached by telephone.


Haiti has only 5,000 police officers and those manning
outlying towns often are outnumbered and outgunned by
insurgents.

"The population, which is cut off completely from
other parts of the country, is finding itself in a
very risky, very dangerous situation," Prime Minister
Yvon Neptune said in the capital, Port-au-Prince,
which has been unaffected by unrest to the north.

Rebels lit flaming tire barricades early Saturday
outside Gonaives and patrolled with rifles amid rumors
police were planning to counterattack.

Opposition leaders planned a mass protest in
Port-au-Prince on Sunday. On Thursday, Aristide
militants crushed a planned anti-government
demonstration, stoning opponents and blocking the
protest route. Protests have been steady since
mid-September.

Opposition politicians refuse to participate in new
elections unless Aristide steps down, and the rebels
say they will lay down their weapons only when he is
ousted.

Many who once backed Aristide have turned on him as
poverty deepens while the president's clique enjoys
lavish lifestyles that some claim are funded by
corruption.

Gas and food prices have more than doubled and more
than half the population has fled mounting violence in
recent months.







__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html