18703: (Chamberlain) Rebels attack police station in central Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Michael Christie

     GONAIVES, Haiti, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Rebels attacked the police
headquarters in the central Haitian city of Hinche on Monday, firing at the
building and killing the police chief and his bodyguard, several radio
stations reported.
     The attack was the latest in an 11-day revolt against President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide by armed gangs who have taken control of the western
city of Gonaives and several other towns in the impoverished Caribbean
country of 8 million people.
     Up until Monday, the revolt appeared to have reached an uneasy
stalemate, with police and government loyalists hitting back in several
towns last week.
     Hinche, the capital of Haiti's central plateau region, has been
plagued over the past year by violence committed by former members of the
country's dissolved military.
     Aristide, speaking at a news conference in the capital, called the
killing of Hinche police chief Maxime Jonas "a shame" and reiterated a call
for dialogue with members of the opposition to try to find a way to end the
violence.
     Up to 50 people have died since the start of the revolt
     But in Gonaives, the port city of 200,000 where the revolt began on
Feb. 5, the rebels seemed emboldened by the appearance over the weekend of
a former police chief and former militia leader and said they now felt
strong enough to take their armed revolt across the country.
     Buter Metayer, leader of an armed gang that took over the western city
on Feb. 5 demanding Aristide's resignation, said Guy Philippe and Louis
Jodel Chamblain had brought "many" armed men with them and were heading to
the country's second-largest city, Cap-Haitien in the north.
     "He's going to do like I did in Gonaives city, he's going to take
Cap-Haitien," Metayer said of Philippe, a former police chief in
Cap-Haitien who had been living in the neighboring Dominican Republic for
the past three years after Aristide accused him of trying to destabilize
the country.
     Philippe turned up with the rebels at the weekend along with
Chamblain, a leader of the right-wing FRAPH militia that terrorized
Haitians when a military junta ruled the impoverished Caribbean country
between 1991 and 1994.
     "I feel much stronger. I'll be strong because before they came it was
just me in Gonaives city with the Gonaives people," Metayer said of the new
arrivals, adding the ultimate goal was the capital, Port-au-Prince.
     Local Radio Metropole reported that the attack in Hinche had been led
by Chamblain, but this could not be confirmed.
     The revolt piled pressure on Aristide, a former parish priest who was
wildly popular when he became the country's first freely elected president
in 1991. Aristide was already facing constant protests from political
opponents accusing him of failing to ease Haiti's chronic poverty,
trampling on civil rights and and using armed supporters to intimidate
opponents.
     Aristide, mid-way through a second term that began in 2001, has said
he intends to stay the course to 2006.
     Asked if the police would attack Gonaives to try to regain control of
the town, Aristide said he could not detail strategy. But he insisted the
government's approach would be one of nonviolence.
     If the rebels do try to take on Cap-Haitien, they could face stiff
resistance in a city where last week Aristide loyalists girded in defense,
creating a maze of burning barricades and hunting down people suspected of
rebel sympathies.
     The gang of armed men who took Gonaives, hounding out the police, is
thought to number several hundred.
     It was not clear how many armed men came back from exile with Philippe
and Chamblain. Rebel spokesman Wynter Etienne said both Chamblain and
Philippe still commanded loyalty among former members of the Haitian army,
which was disbanded by Aristide in 1994 after it staged a bloody coup
against him three years earlier.
     Worried about dwindling supplies of medicine in Gonaives, the
International Committee of the Red Cross sent a surgeon and a doctor, and
1.6 tonnes of medicine, to the city on Monday.

    (Additional reporting by Amy Bracken in Port-au-Prince)