23919: Craig (pub) Haiti Ex - Soldiers Seize Aristide's Old Compound (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dan Craig <sak-pase@bimini.ws>


Haiti Ex - Soldiers Seize Aristide's Old Compound
December 15, 2004
By REUTERS
Filed at 5:59 p.m. ET

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - Some 100 former soldiers
who helped lead a revolt against ousted Haitian President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide seized his abandoned residence on
Wednesday and said they would make it their headquarters.

Thumbing their noses at U.N. troops stationed nearby, the
soldiers said they would use Aristide's compound in the
Port-au-Prince suburb of Tabarre to train a new military to
replace the army disbanded a decade ago because of its
proclivity for coups and human rights abuses.

``We are going to recruit new soldiers because now we have
enough space to train them,'' said their leader,
Remissainthe Ravix, dressed in military camouflage and
wearing a sidearm.

He said his group would conduct a voodoo ceremony to
exorcise the ghosts of people he believed Aristide had
killed.

Aristide lived on the sprawling, tree-filled compound until
he was forced into exile on Feb. 29 by the rebellion and by
U.S. and French pressure to quit.

The rebels still control large swaths of the poor and
unstable Caribbean country despite the presence of a
6,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force.

There was no immediate reaction from the Brazilian-led U.N.
mission, which has come under criticism for not halting a
surge in violence by disarming the disbanded soldiers and
the rival gangs armed by Aristide to prop up his rule.

Outside the compound, the ex-soldiers set up a roadblock
100 yards from the outlying buildings of a university where
the United Nations has its main military base. They let a
convoy of U.N. troops through without question.

Ravix said his force did not need U.N. approval or the
authorization of the interim government of Prime Minister
Gerard Latortue, appointed after Aristide left.

Haiti's 8 million people are sliding deeper into anarchy.
Political violence has killed 200 people since early
September and two severe floods have killed 6,000 since
May.

On Tuesday U.N. troops fought their way into Cite Soleil, a
lawless slum in the Haitian capital, in their first attempt
to end a killing spree by warring street gangs.

One Cite Soleil resident said staunch Aristide ally and
gang leader Dread Wilmer was killed overnight when he tried
to break through a U.N. cordon in the shantytown. U.N.
officials said they had no reports of deaths.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-haiti.html?ex=1104222255&ei=1&en=04325a3328922696
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company