20654: (Chamberlain) Head of Haiti force says won't disarm gunmen (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Ibon Villelabeitia

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 21 (Reuters) - The commander of a
multinational force in Haiti insisted on Sunday it was not his mission to
disarm militants, differing with earlier U.S. assertions that the force
would confiscate weapons.
     "This is a country with a lot of weapons and disarmament is not our
mission. Our mission is to stabilize the country," U.S. Marine Corp. Brig.
Gen. Ronald Coleman, head of the 3,000-strong U.N.-sanctioned force, told
Reuters.
     Army Gen. James Hill, who oversees the Haiti operation as head of
Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, told a Pentagon briefing this month the
1,600 U.S. Marines in Haiti would begin confiscating weapons from everyone
without a valid permit.
     Saying, "you've got to take guns off the street," Hill said Marines
would start going after caches.
     But in an interview at his headquarters in Port-au-Prince, Coleman
described a much less active role for the international force in
disarmament -- a thorny issue in the still tense Caribbean nation. He said
it was up to the Haitian police.
     The U.N.-sanctioned multinational force, also made up of French
legionnaires and gendarmes and troops from Canada and Chile, was sent to
restore order after the Feb. 29 ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
driven into exile by an armed revolt and U.S. pressure.
     "If one of the good citizens of Haiti comes to us and informs us of a
stockpile of weapons we will go, to the best of our ability, always with
the Haitian national police. The Haitian national police will be in the
forefront," he said.
     Haiti, the poorest nation in the Americas, is awash with weapons --
from rusted rifles to modern automatic weapons.
     Rebels who helped oust Aristide as well as pro-Aristide militias known
as "chimeres" -- or ghosts -- remain armed to the teeth, and international
observers say there will be no lasting peace until all rival groups lay
down their weapons.
     Senior commanders of some of the foreign units deployed in Haiti say
the issue of disarmament has not been resolved.
     The force does not want to leave anyone vulnerable by taking away
weapons that may be their only form of defense in a country with few police
and a barely functioning legal system.
     Nor do they want to appear to be taking sides in the bitter divide
between supporters of Aristide and his foes who are again in the
ascendancy.
     In a sign of the difficulty in taking arms off the streets, rebel
leaders on Saturday turned in only a dozen dilapidated weapons to Prime
Minister Gerard Latortue when he visited the port city of Gonaives, where
the revolt began on Feb 5.
     Rebel chief Guy Philippe, a former soldier, told Reuters his men
wanted to hand in all their guns, but they could not while there was still
no security to protect the people.
     In the teeming slums of Port-au-Prince, strongholds of Aristide
supporters, gunmen enraged by the ouster of the poor Caribbean country's
first democratically elected leader say they fear reprisal killings if they
disarm.
     Gang leaders last week handed in a few dozen weapons in the slum of
Cite Soleil. But they were old and rusty and are not believed to have made
much of a dent in their arsenal.
     Attacks on patrols by U.S. Marines have eased after a Marine was shot
in the arm a week ago by gunmen thought to be supporters of Aristide.
     However, on Saturday night, U.S. Marines opened fire on a car as it
sped toward a checkpoint in Port-au-Prince. Two Haitians were wounded.
Marines confiscated one weapon -- a 9 mm pistol.
     Coleman said there was "still work to be done" before his force could
say it had restored sufficient order for a formal U.N. peace-keeping
mission to land here in just under three months.
     He said U.S. Marines were helping Haiti's new authorities to clear
garbage from streets and that they planned to build a soccer field and a
basketball court.