23482: (Chamberlain) Haitians mourn politician (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By AMY BRACKEN

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Oct 16 (AP) -- Hundreds of Haitians mourned the loss of
a leading opposition politician at a funeral Saturday, saying his guidance
is needed in such troubled times, even as gunshots crackled in parts of the
capital and claimed one more victim.
   Funerals often are a flashpoint for violence in the Caribbean nation of
8 million. But that of Gerard Pierre-Charles, 68, who died of heart failure
in Cuba a week ago, went off peacefully under the guard of Brazilian U.N.
peacekeepers.
   "We thought that there might be some problems but everything went
perfect. So I think the situation is getting slowly to normality," U.N.
mission spokesman Damian Carmona told Associated Press Television News.
   Considered one of Haiti's greatest intellectuals, Pierre-Charles was a
longtime ally who broke with Haiti's ousted leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide
years go, accusing him of betraying the poor and drifting toward
dictatorship.
   Elsewhere in the capital, gunshots killed Wisner Tabuteau, director of
the Etincelle lottery chain, Radio Megastar reported. He died on the way to
the private Canape Vert Hospital, a nurse confirmed.
   Another man was wounded in that shootout, apparently between gunmen and
Tabuteau's security guards, according to doctors at the main General
Hospital. They said they treated one other gunshot victim Saturday morning.
   At least 55 people have been killed by gunfire in Port-au-Prince since
Sept. 30, when Aristide supporters took to the streets to demand his return
from exile in South Africa. Police reportedly killed two protesters and the
bodies of three beheaded police were found the next day.
   Sporadic gunbattles and several beheadings followed, prompting most
businesses and schools to stay shut since then.
   But traffic returned to the city's streets on Saturday and doctors who
had not shown up at the main hospital on Friday returned to work.
   Military trucks began towing away hulks of torched vehicles that had
been used to barricade roads against police.
   Hundreds lined up to pay last respects to the body of the mustachioed
Pierre-Charles, which lay in an open coffin at the party headquarters of
his Struggling People's Organization.
   That building was torched by Aristide supporters in 2001, when Aristide
accused his opponents of plotting a coup.
   "He left us at the worst time," Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue
told mourners, "because it's now that we want people who have the
analytical capacity of Gerard, people who can analyze the situation without
passion."
   Outside the funeral, Jean-Claude Bajeux, another former Aristide ally
who directs the Ecumenical Center for Human Rights, expressed frustration
with the persistent violence.
   "1/8Pierre-Charles'3/8 was the voice of reason and people listened to
him," he said. "I'm really sorry that when we are in a very difficult
situation, now, we cannot count on the voice of Gerard Pierre-Charles."
   Pierre-Charles, an economist who wrote at least 16 books, was involved
in politics for half a century and a realist whose communist ideology
shifted to the center after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
   It was impossible to determine an exact death toll from Friday's
violence, when heavy gunfire erupted in several areas of the capital and
business leaders called for people to stay home to "protest against
terror," keeping buses of the street and people away from work.
   Records of the dead also were difficult to find since the president of
the hospital workers' union went on the radio to tell people to take
corpses elsewhere.
   "This was the place they came, and they can't any more because it's not
functioning," said the president, Felix Levy. He said victims could be at
dozens of private morgues in the city.
   Until Friday, the General Hospital morgue was overflowing with
maggot-ridden corpses. Levy said they were incinerated and the morgue would
stay empty until machinery to preserve bodies is repaired.