24334: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti PM says will not heed calls to quit (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Haitis interim prime
minister, Gerard Latortue, said on Tuesday he would not bow to pressure
from political parties calling for his resignation after a spectacular
attack on the countrys main prison.
     Gunmen on Saturday stormed the national penitentiary in
Port-au-Prince, leaving one off-duty guard dead and allowing nearly 500
inmates to escape.
     Former Haitian Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, linked to ousted
ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was briefly freed from the prison
before being found and returned to the prison.
     The attack prompted more than a dozen parties to demand Latortue's
departure, accusing the government of incompetence in security matters as
the Caribbean country heads toward a new presidential election by the end
of the year.
     Latortue on Tuesday rejected the accusations, saying his critics
wanted to undermine democracy and his struggle against corruption.
     "The reality is that there is a group of people in Haiti who cannot
accommodate themselves to the democratic rule we want to establish in
Haiti," Latortue said.
     Latortue said some elements of the Haitian police were involved in the
attack on the national penitentiary.
     He announced the creation of an independent commission to investigate
the incidents. The director of the penitentiary and several prison guards
have been arrested.
     A year after Aristide fled an armed revolt -- his stature as the
father of Haitian democracy and champion of the country's poor sullied by
charges of despotism and corruption -- Haiti remains torn by political
violence before elections.
     "If the government cannot secure a prison here in the capital, I don't
see how it can protect voters and electoral facilities in most remote
places throughout the country," said Turneb Delpe, who leads the Haitian
Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party, known as PNDPH.
     The government is pitted against street gangs still loyal to Aristide,
and its once warm relations with former soldiers who helped lead the revolt
against Aristide have chilled under their repeated demands for the
re-establishment of the army.