19619: (Hermantin)PalmBeachPost-Crowds cheer rebels; troops secure facilities (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Crowds cheer rebels; troops secure facilities

By Mike Williams, Palm Beach Post-Cox News Service
Tuesday, March 2, 2004



PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Thousands jammed the streets Monday to cheer the
leaders of a rebel uprising who helped oust President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, while U.S. and French troops secured the international airport in
preparation for a mission to reestablish order in the rebellion-scarred
nation.

Crowds of pedestrians and heavy traffic thronged the capital a day after
Aristide fled into exile in Africa, although many people still feared an
exchange of revenge killings or terror-style attacks between embittered
Aristide supporters and their foes.

"I'm happy the foreign troops are here," said Donnejour Jean-Aunon, 40, a
businessman who joined an exuberant crowd swelling around the national
palace. "There are still Aristide supporters with guns who will use them if
they get the chance."

Reports of revenge killings swept through the country, with many fearing the
violence was far from over.

In St. Marc, a port city about 60 miles north of the capital, five bodies
said to be of Aristide loyalists killed in the past two days smoldered in a
fire near the gate of the headquarters of Aristide's Lavalas political
party. A mob wielding clubs and machetes and searching for more Aristide
loyalists swept past the town's mayor, who pleaded with them to end the
bloodshed.

There were also reports of four bodies of Aristide supporters found in the
Carrefour district of Port-au-Prince, three of them with hands bound behind
their backs and bullet holes in their heads.

In other parts of the capital, relative calm returned as crowds of
pedestrians and heavy traffic packed the streets a day after Aristide fled.


Rebels, opposition huddle

After a victory tour around the city, rebel leaders Guy Philippe and Louis
Jodel Chamblain huddled with opposition political figures. Philippe is a
former police chief who once plotted a coup against Aristide. Chamblain
headed a feared paramilitary group during Haiti's last dictatorship.

"We're just going to make sure the palace is clean for the president to
come... that there is no threat there," Philippe said of his tour, which
included a stop near the elegant, colonial-style building.

The rebel chief made no contact with a small detachment of American troops
and heavily armed diplomatic security officers who stood watch on the front
steps of the palace.

Late in the day, a larger contingent of U.S. Marines guarded the palace,
setting up a heavy machine gun on the steps. French and U.S. troops were
said to be protecting other key facilities around the city, and were
awaiting reinforcements.

As many as 2,000 U.S. troops and an unknown number of French soldiers are
expected as part of a multinational force approved by the United Nations
that is expected to total 5,000.

Philippe's rebel forces, also heavily armed, took up residence at the former
headquarters of the Haitian Army, which Aristide disbanded in 1994 after
returning to power following his ouster in a military coup.

Philippe promised several times in recent weeks that his rebels would disarm
if Aristide left the country, but when that might take place, or even
whether he and the Marines would establish formal contact, was unclear.

His next role, like much of Haiti's immediate future, was also shrouded in
uncertainty.

For now, former Supreme Court Justice Boniface Alexandre has taken over the
government, filing his role as the constitutional successor to the
president. But the constitution also calls for Alexandre to be approved by
Haiti's parliament, which dissolved in January when lawmakers' terms expired
because new elections were blocked by a long-running dispute between
Aristide and the opposition.

The situation was also complicated because Yvon Neptune, Aristide's prime
minister and a representative of his Lavalas political party, was still in
office.

The international community, led by the United States and France, which lost
its colony in Haiti in 1804 to a slave rebellion that fostered the world's
first independent black republic, is expected to play a major role in the
country's immediate future.

Bush administration sources told reporters they were scrambling to set up a
"council of elders" to move the country toward new elections. The panel
would include figures from Aristide's government, the opposition and
representatives from neutral foreign countries, possibly from some of
Haiti's Caribbean neighbors.

Some of the key hurdles facing the panel would be disarming the rebels,
deciding whether to re-form Haiti's army -- Philippe's key demand -- and
halting the activities of armed thugs loyal to Aristide's political party
who reportedly enforced his political will for pay.

Haiti's opposition is crippled by internal fractures and its lack of any
leaders of national standing. One key figure is Evans Paul, the former mayor
of Port-au-Prince who was once an Aristide loyalist but fell away from him
years ago, but whether he would emerge as a new national leader remains to
be seen.


A nation in poverty and disarray

Whoever takes over will face a nation mired in extreme poverty, with about
80 percent of the 8 million residents said to go to bed hungry each night.

There is little industrial base, a natural landscape ravaged by the cutting
of trees for fuel, pitiful levels of education among the populace, and
widespread disease, including the highest rate of HIV infection in this
hemisphere.

Haiti's schools and hospitals are poorly funded and in disarray, along with
most of its governmental institutions, many of which are riddled with
inefficiency and corruption.

Aristide once inspired great hopes of surmounting these challenges. He swept
into power in 1990, Haiti's first democratically elected president and first
politician to build a power base among the poor.

He was removed by a coup in 1991 but restored by the United States in 1994.
He sat out a term as mandated by the constitution, but won a second term by
a landslide in 2000.

His opponents say his rule degenerated into a corrupt operation dominated by
cronies and the violent gangs called chimeres, Creole for "ghosts" or
"monsters."

Looters ransacked Aristide's posh home near the Port-au-Prince airport,
dragging a grand piano into a courtyard strewn with photographs, documents
and broken china.

Haiti's rebellion left about 100 people dead, although many fear the death
toll might still rise from reprisal killings and continued political
violence.

"I think the Haitian people know what they want," said Serge Montes, a
university professor who led an anti-Aristide group. "We need to fight
poverty, to elect a democratic government and avoid having another
autocratic president. We need to leave this behind."


Immigration legislation filed

Several Florida lawmakers Monday filed a bill that would grant temporary
protective status to Haitian immigrants in the United States who are
scheduled to be deported back to Haiti.

Rep. Peter Deutsch, D-Lauderhill, the bill's prime sponsor, last week sent a
letter signed by 44 House members, including the entire bipartisan South
Florida congressional delegation, urging Homeland Security Secretary Tom
Ridge to grant the temporarily status to keep the Haitians from being
deported.

Other sponsors included Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach, and Rep. Corrine
Brown, D-Jacksonville.

Deutsch said some Haitians were deported last Thursday during the height of
the uprising and "dozens" more were scheduled to be sent back to Haiti soon.

"This is a humanitarian issue," Deutsch said. "People should not be sent
into a chaotic war zone where people are being killed indiscriminately on
the street."

Deutsch also said he was concerned that supporters of Aristide may not be
receiving a proper asylum hearing on Coast Guard cutters, which are
routinely turning back hundreds of fleeing Haitians.

After Aristide was forced out of power a decade ago, hundreds of his
followers were subsequently killed in reprisals, Deutsch said, arguing that
many Aristide supporters may have a legitimate fear for their safety.

mwilliams@coxnews.com

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