23610: (Chamberlain) Uneasy calm returns to Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By MICHELLE FAUL

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Oct 25 (AP) -- An uneasy calm held in Haiti's capital
Monday after three weeks of violence that left more than 60 dead, while
people looted a CARE truck in storm-ravaged Gonaives.
   U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police watched over the slum of Bel-Air on
Monday, one day after they took over the volatile area, a stronghold of
militants loyal to ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
   One Haitian police officer and at least five "hoodlums" were shot and
killed in Sunday's operation, U.N. mission chief Juan Gabriel Valdes told a
news conference Monday.
   Valdes said arrests also were made Sunday as scores of U.N. troops and
about 100 police from Benin, Canada, France and Spain swept through Bel
Air, led by 10 Brazilian armored cars with mounted submachine guns.
   Brazilian Defense Minister Jose Viegas, meanwhile, told the newspaper
Folha de Sao Paulo that Brazilian troops who are leading the U.N. force
should stay in Haiti "at least one year more."
   "It is evident, and the whole world expects it, that there should be an
extension" of the U.N. mission, Viegas said in the interview published
Monday. U.N. peacekeepers, who took over from a U.S.-led force in June,
were initially given a six-month mandate to help stabilize Haiti.
   The deaths confirmed by Valdes brought to at least 61 the number slain
in more than three weeks of sporadic violence in Port-au-Prince.
   "All threats to the economic security of Haiti will be considered as
threats to the international community," Valdes told reporters at the
capital's port, which was guarded by U.N. troops to ensure the transport of
food aid to flood-stricken northern Haiti.
   Last month Tropical Storm Jeanne killed 1,900 people and left 900 others
missing and presumed dead, many in the northwestern city of Gonaives.
   In Gonaives on Monday, people looted a truckload of relief supplies
donated by the aid group CARE to Haiti's health ministry. A private
security guard with a pistol and three other guards with batons did nothing
to stop the looting on the grounds of a storm-ravaged hospital. People
carried away mattresses, shovels, sacks of flour and boxes of medicine.
   In the capital, markets opened as usual while police patrolled in large
numbers and a U.N. helicopter circled overhead.
   Sunday's "Operation Clean Sweep Bel Air" came after the interim
government said it would root out gangs it blames for the violence.
Aristide supporters say the police started the violence by shooting and
killing two protesters at a Sept. 30 march held to demand Aristide's return
from exile.
   Aristide left on a U.S.-chartered plane amid a bloody revolt on Feb. 29
as rebels neared Port-au-Prince.
   Now in South Africa, Aristide has accused the United States of
orchestrating his ouster and insists he remains Haiti's democratically
elected leader. The U.S. government denies his accusations.
   Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue on Saturday castigated the United
Nations, saying it had not sent enough troops to prevent recent violence.
There are 3,200 peacekeepers in the Caribbean country, instead of the
promised 8,700.
   U.N. mission spokesman Damien Onses-Cardona called Sunday's operation "a
great success." Peacekeepers and police cleared some 130 wrecked vehicles
that had been blockading streets, Onses-Cardona said.
   Elsewhere in the capital, gunmen highjacked an ambulance during the
night, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Monday. The gunmen
stopped the Haitian Red Cross ambulance and ordered the driver out near the
midtown Nazon district, where unidentified arsonists also set two vehicles
afire before dawn, the ICRC said.