19099: (Chamberlain) Haitians man barricades against armed rebels (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Jim Loney

    PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Haitian civilians manned
barricades of buses and old refrigerators on roads leading into the capital
on Tuesday after rebels fighting President Jean-Bertrand Aristide said they
would march on the city within days.
     With rebels overrunning half of Haiti, blockades littered streets to
the north of Port-au-Prince. Residents gesticulated angrily at cars that
tried to pass. Barricades bellowing flames blocked some roads in a wealthy
part of Port-au-Prince overnight.
     "It (the barricade) is not for or against the government. It's to
protect the people in the area from the insurgents," said one young man at
a blockade.
     Opposition political parties and civil groups, who insist Aristide
quit but distance themselves from the 2-week-old uprising, have a Tuesday
deadline to respond to a U.S.-backed power-sharing plan that would keep the
president in office.
     Even if they did agree to a deal -- something unlikely -- it was far
from clear it would halt rebels, whose hundreds of disciplined former
soldiers pose a more serious threat to Aristide in a revolt in which more
than 60 people have died.
     The rebels, which include former pro-Aristide gangs, have taken over
the northern Cap Haitien, Haiti's second-biggest city. Many Haitians, who
say Aristide runs their country with thuggery and corruption, have welcomed
them.
     Confident rebel leaders in Cap Haitien said the only resistance so far
had come from the machetes of local Aristide gangs. Police presence in
Haiti - the country has no formal army - has melted away in the face of a
few hundred rebels.
     On Monday, about 50 U.S. Marines flew in on two C-130 Hercules
transport planes to Port-au-Prince airport on a mission to protect the U.S.
Embassy and other U.S. facilities in Haiti.
     France, which ruled Haiti until 1804, has joined several other foreign
governments in telling its citizens to leave. The international airport has
been packed with people, including U.S. missionaries, clamoring for flights
out in stifling heat.
     Aristide's government has a plea for international help for its
hopelessly outgunned police, numbering some 4,000, who appear on continual
retreat since the revolt that erupted on Feb. 5 in the poorest country in
the Americas.
     Aristide championed Haitian democracy in the 1980s and became its
first freely elected leader in 1991. He has vowed to stay on until his
second term ends in 2006.
    The revolt, which erupted in the western city of Gonaives, was begun by
an armed gang that once supported Aristide and turned against him. It has
been joined by others, including former soldiers from the army Aristide
disbanded when he returned to power in 1994 after being ousted in a coup.
    Tensions have simmered in the country since flawed parliamentary
elections in May 2000.