18757: (Chamberlain) Haiti-Uprising (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By MARK STEVENSON

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 18 (AP) -- Haiti's premier warned of an impending
coup amid fears that an uprising that has left at least 57 people dead may
have reached the country's second city, Cap-Haitien.
   Prime Minister Yvon Neptune appealed for international aid, but the
United States and France express reluctance to send troops to put down the
two-week-old rebellion.
   Police and armed supporters of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide mounted
barricades and patrolled the streets of Cap-Haitien on Haiti's north coast
on Tuesday. Flights to that city -- already cut off by land -- were
canceled.
   "We are witnessing the coup d'etat machine in motion," Neptune said,
urging the international community "to show it really wants peace and
stability."
   Aid agencies called for urgent international action, saying Haiti is on
"the verge of a generalized civil war." The U.N. refugee agency met with
officials in Washington to discuss how to confront a feared exodus of
Haitians, though there are no immediate signs of people fleeing.
   In Gonaives, rebels fired shots into the air to prevent crowds of hungry
residents from stampeding several trucks loaded with food -- lentils and
millet -- brought by the aid agency CARE. Associated Press Television News
footage showed one woman trampled in the melee. She was taken to a hospital
for treatment.
   The food was the first shipment to reach Gonaives, Haiti's fourth
largest city, since it was taken by rebels who began the revolt Feb. 5.
   The brutality of the insurrection was on display in the central city of
Hinche, where the bullet-riddled body of a policeman lay, unburied and
rotting, outside the local police station.
   Hinche, at a strategic crossroads in Haiti's agriculture-rich Artibonite
district, was seized Monday by some 50 rebels reportedly led by former
death squad leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain.
   "If the bodyguards of the police chief hadn't fought back he wouldn't
have been killed," resident Francoise Joseph told APTN, saying other police
were allowed to leave.
   About 30 heavily armed police officers barricaded themselves into the
nearby town of Mirebalais and nervously scanned the horizon for potential
attackers.
   Also Tuesday, airlines in Port-au-Prince canceled flights to the
Cap-Haitien, a city of a half-million people, after witnesses in the
barricaded city saw a boat approach and rumors swept the town that rebels
were about to attack.
   "People think the rebels were already in some neighborhoods, and that
while they don't control Cap (Haitien), they are there now," said Bruno
Firmin, a 27-year-old businessman who spoke to relatives in Cap-Haitien
after his flight there was canceled.
   Illustrating the problems Aristide faces in holding on to Cap-Haitien,
Firmin said many there would welcome the rebels, despite the fact that
their leaders are former military and police officers with infamously bad
human rights records.
   "I'm not afraid of the rebels, I'm afraid of the Aristide supporters,"
Firmin said of gangs of toughs who have burned homes and attacked
opposition supporters in Cap-Haitien.
   Aristide was wildly popular when he became Haiti's first freely elected
leader in 1990. But he has lost support since his party swept flawed
legislative elections in 2000 and is accused of using police and armed
militants to stifle dissent.
   An American missionary said his life has been threatened by Aristide
supporters in the western port of St. Marc, where two anti-government
supporters were killed Sunday.
   Terry Snow said he was threatened Tuesday by 10 Aristide partisans, from
the "Clean Sweep" gang that he had seen taking direct orders from Aristide.
   On Monday, they told him they were going to "kill some bad people." On
Tuesday, he was told "If you don't shut up, we'll kill you."
   Snow, 39, from Granbury, Texas, told The Associated Press that he has
asked his 20 missionaries to leave St. Marc but that he is staying though
"we are fearful of the night."
   Haiti's 5,000-member police force appears unable to stem the revolt,
Neptune conceded Tuesday, asking for technical help to strengthen the
force. Both he and Aristide have stopped short of asking for military
intervention.
   Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday "there is frankly no
enthusiasm right now for sending in military or police forces to put down
the violence."
   Powell said the international community wants to see "a political
solution" and only then would willing nations offer a police presence to
implement such an agreement.
   Powell spoke by telephone with French Foreign Minister Dominique de
Villepin, who called an emergency meeting in Paris to weigh the risks of
sending peacekeepers and discuss how otherwise to help Haiti, an
impoverished former colony that is home to 2,000 French citizens.
   "Can we deploy a peacekeeping force?" de Villepin asked on France-Inter
radio, noting it "is very difficult" amid violence.
   He said France had 4,000 troops in its Caribbean territories of
Martinique and Guadeloupe trained in humanitarian work.
   But he also told French TV that "an intervention force ... implies a
stop to the violence, a restart to dialogue. Nothing will be possible in
Haiti if there isn't a jolt."
   U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday the world body plans to
"become much more actively engaged" in Haiti's crisis.