18715: (Chamberlain) Haiti-Uprising (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By MARK STEVENSON

   GONAIVES, Feb 17 (AP) -- Former soldiers took Haiti's rebellion to the
key central city of Hinche, burning the police station and freeing
prisoners as President Jean-Bertrand Aristide appealed for international
help to end an 11-day-old uprising.
   Rebels now control most roads leading to the Artibonite, the country's
breadbasket and home to almost 1 million people, and have cut off northern
Haiti by chasing police from a dozen towns.
   "Blood has flowed in Hinche," Aristide told reporters late Monday,
adding that he has asked for assistance from the Organization of American
States. "It may be that the police cannot cope with this kind of attack."
   Discontent has grown in Haiti, a nation of 8 million people, since
Aristide's party swept flawed legislative elections in 2000. Opposition
politicians refuse to participate in new elections unless the president
steps down -- but Aristide insists he will stay until his term ends in
February 2006.
   About 50 rebels descended Monday on the station in Hinche and killed
three officers before the police fled the city of 50,000, witnesses said.
The city is about 70 miles northeast of Port-au-Prince.
   They said the rebels were led by Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a former soldier
who led a feared paramilitary group that killed and maimed hundreds of
Aristide supporters under military dictatorship between 1991 and 1994.
   Aristide, a priest who preached revolution to Haiti's poor, swept 1990
elections to become the country's first freely elected leader. He was
ousted in a coup in 1991, restored when the United States sent 20,000
troops to Haiti 1994, and disbanded the army in 1995.
   In its place, the country has a 5,000-member police force that is
outnumbered and outgunned by the rebels in outlying posts.
   The rebels are thought to number no more than 100 in Gonaives, where the
rebellion to oust Aristide began on Feb. 5. But they repelled a police
attack to retake the city last week in fighting that killed 30 people,
mostly officers, according to the Haitian Red Cross.
   At least 56 people have died as the revolt has spread from Gonaives,
about 70 miles northwest of Port-au-Prince.
   Reprisal killings and the burning of homes continue in both rebel-held
and police-held areas. On Sunday night, Aristide loyalists reportedly
killed two anti-government supporters in the port town of St. Marc.
   Aristide refused Monday to discuss strategies for halting the revolt or
say whether he was asking for military assistance.
   "A group of terrorists are breaking democratic order," Aristide said.
"We have the responsibility to use the law and dialogue to take a peaceful
way" to quell the uprising that has blocked food, fuel and medical
shipments to northern Haiti.
   On Monday rebels escorted an aid convoy past shipping containers, old
refrigerators and burned-out cars blocking the entrance to Gonaives.
   Led by the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross, the
convoy carried 1.6 tons of supplies, including blood and surgical
equipment.
   A surgeon and a physician arrived to treat some 40 people wounded in the
fighting. Hospital administrator Gabriel Honorat said the wounded are being
cared for in their homes following a battle at the hospital in which police
killed three bystanders.
   "We have no medicine. It is urgent," he said.
   Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, said it was
sending 16 tons of medical equipment to Haiti, mainly surgical and dressing
kits.
   In addition, the aid agency CARE began distributing vegetable oil and
cereals to about 50,000 needy people in Gonaives, where food and fuel
prices have shot up.
   The rebels meanwhile, boasted of their new allies. "They have joined us.
We have created a national resistance," Etienne said Monday. "We're going
to take a major part of Haiti."
   Etienne was a leader of a gang that says Aristide armed them to
terrorize his opponents in Gonaives. They turned on the president when gang
leader Amiot Metayer was assassinated last year. Gang members say he was
killed to stop him giving damaging information about Aristide -- a charge
the president denies.
   The rebel reinforcements are believed to come from the Dominican
Republic and include Guy Philippe, the police chief of Cap-Haitien who fled
to the Dominican Republic after being accused of fomenting a coup in 2002.
   Etienne said Philippe would attack Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second city of
500,000 people, where Aristide supporters have built barricades across
roads and torched homes of opponents.
   Neighboring Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola
with Haiti and fears an exodus of refugees, appealed for urgent
international intervention.
   Frank Guerrero Prats, secretary of foreign relations, called Monday for
the international community to "act with urgency to combat a worsening
situation that could be detrimental for the entire region."
   Also Monday, Dominican authorities suspended an open-air border market
frequented by hundreds of Haitians and Dominicans because of tensions over
the mysterious killings of two Dominican soldiers a week ago.