23086: (Chamberlain) Haiti-Gunbattle (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By REGINE ALEXANDRE

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Aug 30 (AP) -- Gunmen opened fire on a Haitian hospital
with a top French official inside Monday, sparking a battle that left at
least one gunman dead and two people wounded, officials said.
   No one in the 10-member delegation led by Renaud Muselier, the No. 2
official in the French Foreign Ministry, was injured during the shooting at
St. Catherine's Hospital in the capital's Cite Soleil slum, a French
official said on condition of anonymity.
   Muselier, secretary of state for foreign affairs, is on a visit aimed at
boosting cooperation between Haiti and its former colonial ruler.
   The French and their armed escorts took cover in the building for about
two hours until Brazilian U.N. peacekeepers escorted them away in armored
vehicles, the official said.
   He said shooting erupted as about 100 men from the neighborhood
surrounded the hospital. A few hundred rounds were fired in the gunbattle
before the peacekeepers arrived. A French soldier and a Haitian police
officer were wounded by gunfire.
   The slum -- one of Haiti's poorest -- has traditionally been a
stronghold of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and some loyalists
have pledged to resist the interim government that replaced Aristide after
he left Feb. 29 amid a bloody rebellion.
   Aristide has claimed U.S. and French forces forced him out, something
vehemently denied by Washington and Paris.
   U.N. peacekeepers remained in Cite Soleil and were working to piece
together what happened, said Toussaint Kongo-Doudou, a spokesman for the
peacekeeping force in the Caribbean country.
   While Aristide remains in exile in South Africa, tensions remain in the
poorest country of the Americas, where armed rebels still effectively
control some areas despite the presence of the U.N. force and where some
armed Aristide supporters vow to press for his return.