19066: (Chamberlain) U.S. sends Marines, mediates 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 U.S. facilities on Monday and pressed opposition
politicians to accept a power-sharing plan meant to defuse an armed revolt
against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
     Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned an opposition leader, Andre
Apaid, and later spoke with a group of about 20 opposition figures, urging
them to accept a compromise in which the Aristide government and opposition
would choose a new Cabinet, a senior State department official said.
     Even if the plan is accepted it might not halt the drive by armed
rebels, who vowed to move on the capital Port-au-Prince after taking the
second-largest city at the weekend.
     But U.S. officials hope it would change the political climate and
could undermine the rebels, who are small in number but have routed
ill-organized police forces.
     "We are trying to change the momentum today. So let's see where we can
get to today or in the next 24 hours," a senior State Department official
said.
     Aristide has accepted the U.S. proposal. The opposition, which wants
the former priest out of power but disavows any relation with the armed
rebels, did not meet U.S. demands to accept the plan by a Monday deadline
but were given an extra day by Powell, the official said.
     "(Powell) made it clear that we would not support a government that
came to power by exploiting violence," he added.
     Washington, which invaded the impoverished Caribbean state in 1994 to
restore power to Aristide after he was ousted in 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 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.
     The United States, whose forces are stretched in deployments in Iraq
and Afghanistan, says it has no plans for a military intervention to end
the crisis and has focused on mediation as a way out of the crisis.
     If there is no political settlement, either foreign troops will have
to be sent in to restore order or there will be a civil war that could
spark waves of refugees like those in the early 1990s when Aristide was
ousted, analysts say.
     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, U.S.
officials said.
     "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."