20812: (Chamberlain) Aristide party emerges from hiding, demands peace (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Michael Christie

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 25 (Reuters) - Ousted Haitian President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Lavalas Family party emerged from hiding on
Thursday to demand the new government disarm all sides in the divided
country and end intolerance, arrests and killings.
     In their first public appearance since Aristide fled into exile just
under a month ago, a handful of party leaders said they would continue to
work for his return but at the same time try to foster reconciliation and
peace.
     "We're ready for the peace, we're ready for a democratic country, but
we need everybody to disarm," Sorel Francois, a Lavalas Family leader, told
Reuters.
     "We already put the guns down, we asked all the members of Fanmi
Lavalas to put their gun down. But we still see all the terrorists, they
still have their gun, they still walking on the street," he said, referring
to rebels who helped push Aristide out on Feb. 29.
     In a list of demands presented to a news conference, the party called
on the U.N.-backed government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue to stop
"demonizing" Aristide supporters, and stop arbitrary arrests and killings.
     "Mr Latortue has to stop walking arm-in-arm with known criminals that
should be in jail," party leader Wilfrid Lavaud said.
     They urged the notoriously partisan private media in Haiti to fight
intolerance, and said everyone in the country should hand in their guns.
     In the slums where Aristide is still seen as a champion of the
country's poor, supporters of the former president say they have faced
intimidation, raids and killings since he fled abroad.
     Lavalas members say they have been unable to meet, or have had to hide
from marauding gunmen turning up at their homes. Half a dozen Aristide
associates have been detained by police, and some are being held on a coast
guard cutter offshore.
     Their anger has been fueled by the new government's hesitation in
taking away the guns of street gangs and former soldiers who led a
month-long revolt that triggered Aristide's fall.
     Latortue, 69, a former U.N. bureaucrat picked by a council of
prominent Haitians to run the government until new elections, provoked an
outcry from rights groups when he applauded the rebels as "freedom
fighters" last Saturday.
     Lavalas sympathizers said his embrace of the gunmen, some of whom are
convicted human rights abusers or suspected drug runners, showed the revolt
against Aristide was a "coup" by the country's small elite to rob the poor
masses of their vote.
     "A prime minister hand-in-hand with a convicted mass murderer and
calling him a freedom fighter ... Frankly, it's scary," said Patrick Elie,
a former secretary of defense under Aristide.
     Francois said the Lavalas Family party would continue to campaign for
Aristide's return so that he could finish his second five-year term. At the
same time, it would prepare for the next elections.