18725: (Chamberlain) Dominican Rep. says region must help Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     SANTO DOMINGO, Feb 17 (Reuters) - The international community should
step in urgently to help Haiti deal with a violent anti-government
uprising, neighboring Dominican Republic said on Tuesday.
     Haiti, facing a 12-day-old revolt against President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with the Dominican
Republic, which fears unrest might spill across the border.
     "It's time for the international community, the multinational lending
agencies and friendly governments to act with a greater sense of urgency
toward the deepening of a crisis that could end up being very harmful for
the region," Foreign Minister Francisco Guerrero Prats said.
     The Dominican Republic sought a peaceful solution to the crisis and
was in touch with regional groups including the Caribbean trade group
Caricom and the Organization of American States, he added.
     Foreign aid to Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, has been
scant in recent years because of a long-running dispute between Aristide
and his political opponents. The crisis took a sharp turn for the worse
when an armed gang took over the western Haitian city of Gonaives on Feb. 5
in a revolt that has spread to several other towns.
     The Dominican Republic, which in recent years has enjoyed relative
economic and political stability compared with its impoverished neighbor,
has reinforced the soldiers guarding its 240-mile (380-km) border.
President Hipolito Mejia said at the weekend that any conspirators in the
revolt trying to get in or out of the Dominican Republic would be arrested.
     But some Haitians who have joined the rebels in Gonaives, including a
former leader of a paramilitary group and a former senior police official,
have slipped over the border from the Dominican Republic.
     Two Dominican soldiers at the frontier were killed on Saturday in an
attack apparently carried out by Haitians, who fled with the soldiers'
weapons.