20114: (Chamberlain) Crisis-torn Haiti works to put government in place (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Michael Christie and Ibon Villelabeitia

    PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 9 (Reuters) - With a 2,300-strong
international force patrolling the capital, a Haitian council on Tuesday
considered candidates for prime minister in another tentative step toward
establishing a government.
     The panel, which included members of both the political opposition and
remnants of the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, on Monday interviewed
candidates to replace Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, an Aristide appointee.
     They were expected to make a decision as early as Tuesday.
     The candidates included Smarck Michel, a businessman who was prime
minister in 1994 and 1995 but fell out with Aristide over economic policy,
and former army Gen. Herard Abraham.
     The United Nations was due to launch a world appeal on Tuesday to help
Haiti after years of neglect, a bloody monthlong revolt and the ouster of
Aristide on Feb. 29 left the poorest country in the Americas facing a
humanitarian crisis.
     Hundreds of millions of dollars in direct development aid and loans
were suspended after parliamentary elections in 2000, swept by Aristide's
Lavalas Family party, were declared flawed.
     Since the armed revolt that forced Aristide to resign began on Feb. 5,
the barren north has been virtually cut off. Areas wracked by recurring
drought and floods have received little assistance since.
     Warehouses storing emergency food for the U.N.'s World Food Programme
have been looted after armed rebels, backed by ex-soldiers and former death
squad leaders, rolled through towns.
     An assessment team dispatched to the impoverished Caribbean nation by
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was beginning work on a plan to rebuild
Haiti and replace the U.S.-led force with multinational peacekeepers.
     The council choosing the prime minister gathered as U.S. Marines,
French gendarmes and Canadian troops maintained watch over the capital 10
days after Aristide's flight into exile triggered lootings and killings.
     Boniface Alexandre, the country's chief justice, was sworn in on
Monday as the country's new president in an awkward ceremony in the
National Palace.
     Aristide, a champion of democracy when he helped unseat the Duvalier
family dictatorship in the late 1980s but accused of corruption and
autocratic rule in recent years, maintained on Monday from exile in the
Central African Republic that he remained Haiti's legitimate leader.
     He called on his supporters, many of whom remain holed up behind
barricades in the capital's slums, enraged at the loss of Haiti's first
democratically elected leader, to "peacefully" resist what he termed a U.S.
occupation.
     Militant supporters of the former slum priest on Sunday fired on a
crowd celebrating his departure, killing at least six. U.S. Marines killed
one attacker.
     U.S. officials, who deny allegations Aristide was kidnapped, denounced
him for pouring fuel on the tensions that threaten to unleash further
bloodshed. France insisted on Tuesday that Aristide's resignation was
proper.
     Haiti's constitution stipulates that an interim president must be
approved by parliament, but the legislature was disbanded early this year
when the terms of most of its members expired. The constitution calls for
new elections as well within 90 days of a president's resignation.