26185: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Jailed Priest (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Sept 5 (AP) -- The party of ousted President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide Monday named a jailed Roman Catholic priest as its
candidate for Haiti's president in elections this fall.
   Meanwhile, Haiti's electoral commission said that presidential and
legislative elections will take place on Nov. 20 scheduled instead of
earlier in the month to give voters more time to register.
   Aristide's Lavalas Family party said it would register the Rev. Gerard
Jean-Juste as its standard bearer next week, apparently ending a heated
internal feud over whether to participate in elections -- the first since
the bloody February 2004 uprising that helped topple Aristide.
   "Even if he is in jail, we will register him," Rene Monplaisir, a
Lavalas leader in the pro-Aristide slum of Cite Soleil, told cheering
supporters in an assembly hall in Port-au-Prince, the capital.
   Jean-Juste was arrested in July on suspicion of involvement in the
kidnapping and slaying of prominent Haitian journalist Jacques Roche.
Jean-Juste, who was in Miami when Roche was killed, has denied involvement.
   Lavalas' participation in elections is considered key because the party
still enjoys widespread support in Haiti, especially among the vast slums
of Port-au-Prince.