21574: (Chamberlain) Haiti leader wants to seize Aristide accounts (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, April 27 (Reuters) - Haiti's new leader said on
Tuesday he was working with the United States, France and the European
Union to track down and freeze bank accounts belonging to ousted President
Jean Bertrand Aristide.
     Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue told local radio he believed
the accounts held as much money as the foreign governments were likely to
lend his poor Caribbean country in its efforts to rebuild after a monthlong
revolt.
     Latortue, appointed by a council of prominent Haitians after Aristide
was driven into exile on Feb. 29 by the armed rebellion and U.S. and French
pressure to quit, did not give a figure for the money he accuses Aristide
of stealing.
     Neither did he indicate where he thought the accounts were likely to
be found.
     The former U.N. bureaucrat plans to travel to Washington, Paris and
Brussels next month and said he would pursue the efforts to seize the
accounts.
     Aristide supporters say he lived modestly and they doubt he ever stole
a cent of public money for himself.
     U.S. Marines are leading a 3,600-member multinational force that began
arriving in Haiti hours after Aristide's departure. The U.S. troops are due
to hand over to a U.N. peacekeeping force on June 1.
     Aristide, a former slum priest who became Haiti's first democratically
elected leader in 1991, is in temporary exile in nearby Jamaica. He claims
he was ousted in a U.S.-backed "political kidnapping," a charge Washington
denies.