19185: (Chamberlain) Dominican Republic returns Haiti police, officials (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Manuel Jimenez

    SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic, Feb 25 (Reuters) - The Dominican
Republic returned 37 Haitian police and local officials to their troubled
country while its leaders worried that the conflict - or a flood of
refugees - could spill over the border.
     Haiti, torn by a 3-week-old uprising that has killed more than 60
people and threatened President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's presidency, and
the Dominican Republic share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.
     The 27 police officers and 10 local government officials
  who fled to the Dominican Republic were from small towns in central Haiti
that have been overrun by rebels, officials said on Wednesday.
     One of the group was led by a police commander of a rural area who,
unable to fight back against the rebels last week, ordered a retreat and
fled over the border with his men.
     Haitian consul Edwin Paraison said the police and officials were
handed over to Haitian Embassy officials and then returned home to
Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital.
     Haitian police, a force of fewer than 5,000 in a country of 8 million,
have been outnumbered and outgunned in many areas by the rebels, who now
control much of the north of the country.
     One of the men, the commissioner of Tomassique province, said over the
weekend that he and nine officers fled because they could not defend
themselves. But now they wanted to go home.
     "We want to go back to get the bandits who killed Jonas," Jean Jude
Chery said, referring to his friend Jonas Maxime, commissioner in the
central city of Hinche that the rebels took last week.
     Concerned that the turmoil in Haiti could prompt a flood of refugees,
the Dominican Republic sent hundreds of reinforcements to the troops who
guard the 225-mile (360 km) border after the violence in Haiti broke out
this month.
     President Hipolito Mejia's government has said the Dominican Republic
cannot afford to take in a flood of refugees.
     Up to 1 million Haitians live in the Dominican Republic, which has a
population of about 9 million and is generally far more prosperous.
     The revolt in Haiti erupted in the western city of Gonaives on Feb. 5,
organized by an armed gang that once supported Aristide but turned against
him. The uprising was joined by a former leader of a notorious death squad,
a former senior police officer and members of Haiti's disbanded army.