18924: (Chamberlain) U.S. demands Aristide accept new cabinet (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Saul Hudson

    WASHINGTON, Feb 20 (Reuters) - The United States demanded on Friday
that Haiti's President Jean-Bertrand Aristide form a new Cabinet with the
opposition to break a political standoff that is fueling a deadly revolt,
U.S. officials said.
     U.S. Ambassador James Foley met Aristide and told him to accept a
plan, backed by the United States, Canada, France and other nations, to
install a new prime minister who could choose Cabinet members as a way of
ending the impasse.
     The United States made its demand as part of intensified mediation
this week to search for a political settlement that it hopes will calm the
spiraling violence and avert having to send in U.S. troops to restore order
as it did a decade ago.
     "I think what's important is that a new government in Haiti be seen as
independent and credible and inclusive. And those are, I think, the broad
guidelines of the plan," State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said of the
demands presented to Aristide on Friday.
     Dozens of people have been killed in the poorest nation in the
Americas during this month's revolt, which capped months of anti-government
demonstrations and years of political tensions dating from contested
parliamentary elections in 2000.
     Aristide, who was restored to power in 1994 by a U.S. invasion, has
vowed to see out his term which ends in 2006.
     Weeks ago, the former priest agreed with mediators of the Caribbean
bloc, CARICOM, to accept a new prime minister in a list of concessions that
also included disarming gangs aligned with political parties.
     He has failed fulfill his pledges but Washington, which criticizes
Aristide for fomenting violence and has not ruled out his resignation as a
way out of the crisis, hopes the broader international pressure will
persuade him to act.
     "We are still pushing a political solution. The whole international
community is together on this," Secretary of State Colin Powell said in an
interview with Knight Ridder news service. He added there was a
multilateral "effort to give a sense of urgency and accelerate the parties
accepting the terms of the CARICOM plan."
     In the highest-profile U.S. mediation yet, the Bush administration's
point man for the Americas, Roger Noriega, will lead a delegation on
Saturday that includes French and Canadian officials, to underscore the
demands on Aristide.
      Washington is also looking for compromise from the opposition.
     "This is the time for the opposition to recognize that whatever their
legitimate complaints may or may not be, they will not be dealt with if
they fall in league or get under the same umbrella with thugs, murderers,"
Powell said.
     A four-member U.S. military team has also arrived in Haiti to assess
security plans in case an evacuation is needed of the embassy, where staff
are under a night curfew.
     During this month's violence, two U.S. diplomats were shot at in their
vehicle in the capital, Port-au-Prince. They returned fire and escaped,
said a State Department official, who asked not to be named.
     On Friday, lines of Americans and Canadians, many of them missionaries
and aid workers, clogged the capital's airport following a warning by the
United States, which urged its citizens to leave the country.