19062: (Chamberlain) U.S. sends Marines, works for Haiti peace (later story) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Saul Hudson and Will Dunham

     WASHINGTON, Feb 23 (Reuters) - The United States sent about 50 Marines
to Haiti to protect its embassy and other facilities on Monday and pressed
the opposition to accept a power-sharing plan to end an armed revolt
against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
     The State Department said Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned
one opposition leader, Andre Apaid, to press a peace plan which would
involve Washington helping the government and the opposition choose a new
compromise Cabinet.
     Aristide has accepted the proposal but the opposition, which wants HIM
out of power but disavows any relation with the armed rebels, did not
respond to U.S. demands to accept the plan by a Monday deadline.
     A senior State Department official said the deadline for the
opposition to respond could be extended. He said, "If it takes them a
little longer than we had given them to get a positive response, then they
can have that."
     Washington, which invaded the impoverished Caribbean state in 1994 to
restore Aristide to power after he was ousted by a coup, has said it would
not accept rebels unseating him by force although it was open to his
negotiated departure.
     The U.S. military's Miami-based Southern Command said the team of
Marines, which arrived at Port-au-Prince airport in a Hercules C-130
transport plane, would "conduct security operations for a handful of U.S.
facilities" in the capital.
     Asked if the United States ruled out military intervention in Haiti, a
senior State Department official did not answer directly but said: "We are
trying to change the momentum today. So let's see where we can get to today
or in the next 24 hours."
     The United States has been reluctant to send troops to quell the
violence and has focused on mediating a settlement. U.S. forces are
stretched in deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
     Escalating their revolt over the weekend, the rebels overran the
second-largest city and vowed to move on the rest of the country even
though Aristide agreed to accept the U.S. plan allowing the opposition
posts in the Cabinet.
     Even if an accord is struck, it would not take into account the armed
groups. But the Bush administration says its strategy is to hammer out a
peace accord between the opposition and Aristide in the hope that it will
defuse the violence.
     That would avert either foreign troops having to be sent in to restore
order or a civil war that could spark waves of refugees like those in the
early 1990s when Aristide lost power in a coup.
     The United States has so far rejected Aristide's pleas for
reinforcements for his hapless police force, which has repeatedly lost
battles in fighting this month that has effectively cut the country in two.
     Over the weekend, the United States evacuated its non-emergency staff
and family members from the embassy in Port-au-Prince because of the
spreading revolt.
     For now there was no plan to evacuate its remaining diplomats, who are
needed to mediate, U.S. officials said.
     "I cannot remember the last time we completely got everybody out.
Things can go to hell in a hand basket and we still keep some people in,"
one State Department official said. "There's a ladder of escalation, and we
are many steps away from ferrying people out in helicopters."