19372: (Chamberlain) Haiti-Uprising (later story) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By PAISLEY DODDS

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 27 (AP) -- Rebels seeking to oust President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide seized a strategic town Friday and said they will
blockade the chaotic capital to "close the circle" around the embattled
leader. Aristide said he would not step down.
   Pentagon officials are weighing the possibility of sending troops to
waters off Haiti to guard against a possible refugee crisis and to protect
the estimated 20,000 Americans there.
   Aristide, under increasing pressure to relinquish power from the United
States and the rebels, told CNN that "I have the responsibility as an
elected president to stay where I am."
   Chaos increasingly engulfed the capital city. Armed thugs hijacked cars
at will. Looters hit the capital's seaport, stealing almost everything
thing in sight and setting ablaze a freight terminal. Crowds jammed into
the airport, only to find most flights canceled.
   Hundreds of people looted Port-au-Prince's seaport, scurrying out with
boxes of melting chicken parts and pork loins strapped to their backs.
Others streamed out with television sets, table lamps, furniture and other
goods.
   Smoke wafted from the smoldering ruins of a torched freight terminal. No
police were in sight. The body of a dead man lay on the ground amid a layer
of papers and other trash; it was unclear how he was killed.
   The bodies of two executed men also lay a few blocks from the
presidential National Palace.
   Shops put up hurricane shutters against looters, and people stayed home
behind locked doors, leaving the streets to gangs of pro-Aristide thugs who
hijacked cars, robbed people at barricades and roamed the street on foot
yelling "Five years, five years." Aristide was elected to a five-year term
that ends February 2006.
   A few police patrolled in cars, but were vastly outnumbered by the
militants.
   The rebels, who have overrun at least half of Haiti since they began the
uprising three weeks ago, closed in on the seaside capital in a pincer
movement, overrunning villages as police fled.
   Police officers in Croix-des-Bouquets, just nine miles northeast of
Port-au-Prince, shed their uniforms for civilian clothes, appeared to have
abandoned their guns and looked ready to flee.
   Guy Philippe, commander of the motley group of Haitian rebels, said he
intended to besiege the capital and "close the circle" around Aristide.
   "We want to block Port-au-Prince totally," he told reporters in
Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city, which the rebels seized on
Sunday. He said the rebels would try to cut land routes into the capital
and would send two boats to attempt to prevent ships from bringing in
supplies.
   "Port-au-Prince now ... would be very hard to take it. It would be a lot
of fight, a lot of death," Philippe said. "So what we want is desperation
first."
   That strategy threatens further misery to residents, already lining up
for scarce gas and dwindling fresh produce since the rebels cut supplies
from the central Artibonite district, which is Haiti's breadbasket.
   Human Rights Watch warned of "widespread bloodshed and indiscriminate
destruction of civilian property" if the rebels attacked Port-au-Prince.
   Philippe said the rebels encountered little resistance as they closed in
on the capital.
   On Friday, rebels were seen by an Associated Press reporter in
Mirebalais, 25 miles northeast of Port-au-Prince sitting astride a
strategic crossroad leading west to the government-held town of St. Marc,
south to the capital, east to the Dominican Republic and north into
territory where the rebels have chased police from a score of towns.
   The rebels arrived in a truck, firing their guns, and freed 67
prisoners, said David Joseph, a 40-year-old law student. He said most of
the fighters then left in two commandeered cars.
   As he spoke, about a dozen rebels, some wearing camouflage, patrolled in
a truck.
   "I would gladly join them if I had a gun," Joseph said.
   Philippe said rebels occupied part of Jeremie, in their first sortie on
Haiti's western peninsula.
   Also on the peninsula, Haiti's third-largest city, the southern port of
Les Cayes, fell Thursday to the Base Resistance, a rebel faction whose
origins and alliances were not immediately clear.
   Robbins Jean, an Aristide youth organizer, criticized the United States
for pressuring Aristide.
   "You tell George W. Bush he is a hypocrite and an assassin because the
terrorists are killing the Haitian people," Jean, 25, told a reporter near
the National Palace, where hundreds of youths -- armed with old rifles and
pistols, machetes and even a dull, rusty ax -- gathered to repel any
rebels.
   "We will fight to the death," Jean declared.
   In Paris, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin met with
Aristide's chief of staff Jean-Claude Desgranges and his Foreign Minister
Joseph Antonio and repeated his call for Aristide to resign.
   "It's for President Aristide, who bears a heavy responsibility in the
current situation, to draw the consequences of the impasse," officials said
de Villepin told the Haitians. It was not clear how the message was
received. Antonio abruptly canceled a scheduled news conference.
   The rebellion erupted Feb. 5 in western Gonaives, the fourth-largest
city. About 80 people, half of them police officers, have been killed so
far.
   The crisis has been brewing since Aristide's party swept flawed
legislative elections in 2000 and international donors froze millions of
dollars in aid.
   Aristide, a former priest of Haiti's slums who in 1990 became its first
freely elected leader, has lost popularity amid accusations he condoned
corruption, failed to help the poor and had thugs attack political
opponents.
   He has agreed to a U.S.-backed plan that requires him to share power
with his opponents, but the political opposition rejected the proposal,
insisting he resign.
   A senior U.S. official said the Bush administration has concluded that
the best way to prevent the insurgents from seizing power is for Aristide
should resign and transfer power to Supreme Court Chief Justice Boniface
Alexandre, his constitutional successor. He is known in Haiti for his
honesty.
   ------
   Associated Press reporter Ian James contributed to this report from
Cap-Haitien and AP reporters Michael Norton and Mark Stevenson from
Port-au-Prince.