18840: (Chamberlain) Haiti-Uprising (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By MARK STEVENSON

   CAP-HAITIEN, Feb 19 (AP) -- Armed pro-government thugs patrolled Haiti's
second-largest city Thursday, vowing to counter any rebel attempt to seize
control as frightened police remained in their station.
   As casualties mount in the 2-week-old uprising, President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide planned a ceremony Thursday in the capital, Port-au-Prince, to
honor slain police. The rebels have chased police from more than a dozen
towns since the revolt began.
   Rebels in the northwestern city of Gonaives, meanwhile, said their
movement will now answer to a single commander and be called the National
Resistance Front To Liberate Haiti.
   "We have a single strategy, to liberate all the cities in all the
districts," Winter Etienne, a leader of the Gonaives Resistance Front, said
Wednesday.
   He said rebels from various groups are united behind one man as
commander: Guy Philippe, a former police chief accused of planning a 2001
attack on Haiti's National Palace that killed 10. Philippe has returned to
Haiti from exile, and was believed to have crossed over from the Dominican
Republic recently.
   "We have the same objective -- to oust Aristide," Etienne said.
   Barricades of car chassis, scrap metal and trees blocked highways at the
edge of the northern port of Cap-Haitien, which with about a half million
residents is the country's second-largest city.
   Aristide loyalists manning the barricades said no one would be allowed
past. Residents formed long lines to obtain gasoline since supply routes
are blocked.
   Other Aristide backers patrolled the city with guns, vowing to take a
stand against the rebellion, which has killed some 60 people since Feb. 5.
   "We have machetes and guns, and we will resist," carpenter Pierre
Frandley said.
   Police took refuge in their station, making clear they were too scared
to patrol the streets of Cap-Haitien. But children returned to school
Thursday after rumors of a looming rebel attack prompted classes to be
canceled two days earlier.
   U.S. officials have said they 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 U.S. government suggestions that he convene early
presidential elections as a way to defuse the crisis, a senior U.S.
official said Wednesday.
   Haitian government spokesman Mario Dupuy said in Port-au-Prince that the
Caribbean nation could not accept any proposal involving a change in the
election date or an early handoff of power. Aristide's term runs until
2006.
   "Both proposals are unacceptable," Dupuy told The Associated Press.
"They are tantamount to admitting the legitimacy of a coup d'etat against
the government."
   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 Haiti's poor.
   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.
   As Haiti's beleaguered government pleaded in vain for international
help, former soldiers ousted by U.S. troops in 1994 crossed from the
Dominican Republic to join the rebellion.
   Some 50 rebels led by a former death squad leader seized the central
city of Hinche on Monday.
   Citing the return of Aristide's old enemies as rebels, some government
backers suggested a return to "necklacing" -- an execution method in which
tires doused in gasoline are put over a victim's head and set ablaze.
   Given the return of rebels accused of past atrocities, "Why shouldn't
necklacing be put to use?" pro-Aristide street group leader Paul Raymond
said Wednesday at a news conference.
   Haitian radio stations also reported Wednesday that police have deserted
their posts in four more towns, and Dominican soldiers said they arrested
four fleeing Haitian police along the sparsely guarded border.
   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 group warned, recalling the tens of
thousands of Haitian boat people who fled to U.S. shores to escape the
1991-1994 military dictatorship.
   Aristide, a once-beloved former priest who won Haiti's first free
elections in a landslide in 1990, was ousted by the army eight months
later. He was restored to popular acclaim when the United States sent
20,000 troops to Haiti in 1994.
   The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday threw its weight behind Caribbean
and Latin American efforts to find a peaceful political solution but said
there was no discussion about sending U.N. peacekeepers.
   Only France, Haiti's former colonizer, has said it is considering
whether there is support for an intervention force.
   ------
   Associated Press reporter George Gedda contributed to this story from
Washington.