18803: Lemieux: Baltimore Sun/AP: Rebels threaten to attack Haiti's second city (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

Rebels threaten to attack Haiti's second city
Police desert posts as government pleads in vain for
international aid

The Associated Press

February 18, 2004, 6:12 PM EST

CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti -- Frightened police barricaded
themselves inside their station Wednesday and said they
could not repel a threatened rebel attack on Haiti's
second-largest city, the last major government bastion in
the north. Officers in other towns deserted their posts
with no guerrillas in sight.

Even as police made clear they were too scared to patrol
the streets of Cap-Haitien, militant defenders of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide vowed to take a stand against the
2-week-old rebellion, which has killed some 60 people and
has attracted leaders with murderous backgrounds.

"We have machetes and guns, and we will resist," said
carpenter Pierre Frandley. "The police might have been
scared, but the people got together and organized. ... We
blocked the streets."

There were fears rebels already have infiltrated the
northern port and more were headed that way.

U.S. officials worry the current crisis would only worsen
if Aristide is forced to flee. One option being internally
discussed is a transfer of power, with Aristide's consent,
to a temporary governing board made up of Haitians who
would run the country until a new president was elected. It
is not clear how much support that proposal has at top
levels of the Bush administration.

Aristide rebuffed Bush administration suggestions that he
convene early presidential elections as a way to defuse the
crisis, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday.

Although the administration has said it is opposed to any
Haitian opposition attempt to drive Aristide from office,
Bush officials are privately discussing ideas for a
possible constitutional succession before Aristide's term
expires in February 2006.

Haitian government spokesman Mario Dupuy called both
options "unacceptable."

"They are tantamount to admitting the legitimacy of a coup
d'etat against the government," he told The Associated
Press.

As Haiti's beleaguered government pleaded in vain for
international help, former soldiers ousted in a 1994 U.S.
military intervention crossed from the Dominican Republic
to join the rebellion.

"The army is no longer demobilized. The army is mobilized,"
said Jean-Baptiste Joseph, a former army sergeant who had
headed a group of demobilized soldiers before being jailed
in the 1990s for plotting insurrection.

He spoke in Hinche, a town of 50,000 at a strategic
crossroads in Haiti's agriculture-rich Artibonite district,
which was seized Monday by some 50 rebels led by a former
death squad leader.

Amnesty International warned "the specter of past
violations continues to haunt Haiti" and that the newly
emerged rebel leaders have "a horrific track record when it
comes to human rights."

Their arrival means "fears of a mass population outflow
from Haiti are bound to increase," the human rights
organization warned, recalling the tens of thousands of
Haitian boatpeople who fled to U.S. shores to escape the
1991-1994 military dictatorship.

One sign that a refugee crisis may be imminent would be a
large-scale construction of boats. State Department
spokesman Richard Boucher said there are no signs of such
activity, but the administration wants to "make sure that
we're prepared should something happen."

The rebels have chased police from more than a dozen towns
and cut supply lines to northern Haiti from Port-au-Prince,
the capital to the south, and from the western Dominican
Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.
Dominican soldiers said Wednesday they arrested four
fleeing Haitian police along the sparsely guarded border.

Food and fuel prices have soared behind rebel lines;
electricity and telephone service, always erratic, has been
cut totally in many towns. Most vulnerable are nearly
300,000 drought-stricken peasants dependent on food aid.

The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday threw its weight
behind Caribbean and Latin American efforts to find a
peaceful political solution. The statement came at the
behest of Chile, whose ambassador, Heraldo Munoz, said
there was no discussion about sending U.N. peacekeepers.

The Security Council called on Aristide's government and
the opposition "to restore confidence and dialogue, and
overcome their differences peacefully and democratically
through constitutional means."

Only France, Haiti's former colonizer, has said it is
considering whether there is support for an intervention
force.

The crisis has been brewing since Aristide's party swept
flawed legislative elections in 2000. Donors froze millions
in international aid, leaving Aristide no means to keep
election promises to make a better life for Haiti's 8
million people, half of whom go hungry daily.

Since then, Aristide has lost support amid charges he uses
police and militants to terrorize opponents and allows
corruption fueled by drug-trafficking to go unchecked.

The once-beloved former priest, who won Haiti's first free
elections in a landslide in 1990, was ousted by the
military eight months later. He was restored to popular
acclaim when the United States sent 20,000 troops to Haiti
in 1994.

Illustrating the problems Aristide faces, businessman Bruno
Firmin told AP that people in Cap-Haitien think rebels
already have infiltrated some neighborhoods and that many
would welcome them, even though 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.

At Cap-Haitien's police station, one officer who spoke on
condition of anonymity admitted they too were scared. "Of
course we are," he said. "It's a natural reaction after
what happened in Gonaives and in other parts of the
country."
Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press


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