18797: CBS/AP: Haiti Warns Of 'Coup' (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>


Haiti Warns Of 'Coup'
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb. 18, 2004


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 expressed 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.

"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."

Currently, officials from USAID, the U.N. and the
Organization of American States are in Haiti, trying to
assess the humanitarian needs of the country's 8 million
people, says CBS News State Department Reporter Charles M.
Wolfson.

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.

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.

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.

Aristide's popularity has waned since his party swept
flawed 2000 legislative elections and international donors
— including the United States — froze millions of aid
dollars.

Haiti's opposition and foreign donors claimed that 10 seats
in Haiti's 27-member Senate were illegally decided in a
first round of voting, rather than going to a second round,
because the votes were tallied using an incorrect formula.
Aristide's party won those and most other legislative
seats.

The elections had initially been described as fair. The
resulting aid freeze meant Aristide has been unable to keep
his election promise of "peace of mind, peace in the
belly."

The U.S. government last week appeared to signaling that it
would not be opposed to Aristide's overthrow. A senior
State Department official told The New York Times, "When we
talk about undergoing change in the way Haiti is governed,
I think that could indeed involve changes in Aristide's
position."

But Tuesday, asked if the U.S. wanted Aristide to step
down, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said,
"That's not our position."

"The violence in Haiti puts the Bush Administration is in
an uncomfortable position: While Powell has been clear that
a coup d'etat would be unacceptable, the Administration in
part provoked the crisis by cutting off aid to Aristide,"
CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk said.

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