FIghters await attack orders; pressure mounts on Aristide to resign.
By The Associated Press
February 26, 2004, 6:02 PM EST
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti --
Haiti's rebel leader said his
fighters moved closer to the capital Thursday and awaited an order
to attack unless President Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigns.
Government loyalists threatening death and torchings began building
defenses in front of the National Palace.
The U.N. Security Council met on Haiti, and Caribbean nations
urged the immediate authorization of a multinational force to end
the violence and restore law and order. But key council members
France and the United States said they want a political settlement
first.
In an interview with CNN, Aristide said he would not resign. He
said a small international force -- "a couple of dozen" soldiers
or police -- could prompt the rebels to stand down. Referring to the
rebels, he said: "At any time those terrorists may come to
Port-au-Prince and kill thousands of people."
The insurgents, who have overrun half of the country in the
3-week-old rebellion, would not be expected to face much resistance
in the capital from Haiti's ill-equipped police force.
But hundreds of Aristide supporters, some armed with machetes
and pistols, gathered Thursday in front of the National Palace and,
with teenagers driving bulldozers and forklifts, started building a
defensive rampart.
"If Aristide goes, cut off their heads and burn down their
houses!" they shouted, echoing the war cry of Jean-Jacques
Dessalines, the Haitian general who ousted French colonizers from
Haiti to end slavery 200 years ago.
The Aristide loyalists shouted epithets against France, whose
Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin on Wednesday condemned
Aristide for Haiti's crisis and called for him to resign.
As rumors spread that the rebels were arriving by boat,
truckloads of Aristide supporters armed with old pistols were seen
heading toward the seaside Carrefour neighborhood.
In Carrefour, gunmen fired shots at the home of Haiti's most
prominent architect, Albert Mangones, and wounded a security guard,
a family member said. The French Embassy was calling the police to
try to evacuate Mangones' widow, an elderly French citizen, and
their daughter.
Rebel leader Guy Philippe said the pro-Aristide militants,
called chimeres or angry young men, were not his enemies.
"We are calling for everybody to stay home, not to fight
against us because we are fighting for them," Philippe said in an
interview with The Associated Press in the northern city of
Cap-Haitien.
"All those chimeres, we have nothing against them," he said.
"We know Mr. Aristide gave them some money and we know how poor
they are."
Some 90 miles to the south, Port-au-Prince was a city on edge.
Americans with M-16s guarded a convoy of U.N. workers and their
families on the way to the airport, passing street barricades made
of wrecked, abandoned cars, rock and tires built by Aristide
supporters to block the city from a rebel assault.
Military helicopters of the Dominican Republic, which shares the
island of Hispaniola with Haiti, were ferrying people from the
Dominican Embassy to the airport.
The international airport was packed, mostly with
Haitian-Americans trying to return to the United States.
"Anyone is going to want to save his own skin. It's a state of
fear," said a 34-year-old Haitian who lives in New York and didn't
want to give his name.
The capital was mainly calm in the morning, a day after sporadic
looting erupted, but more and more barricades, some of burning
tires, were set by Aristide supporters later in the day. At the
roadblocks, people were being robbed. Businesses were shuttered,
long lines formed at the few open banks and gas stations, and
streets were mostly devoid of people.
Aristide, a former priest of Haiti's slums who in 1990 became
Haiti's first freely elected leader, has lost popularity amid
accusations he condoned corruption, failed to help the poor and had
thugs attack and intimidate political opponents.
But he still retained loyalty among some Haitians, including
Jacques Moise, one of those waiting to withdraw cash at the Soge
Bank in Port-au-Prince.
"I wish Aristide and the opposition could get together, because
for me Aristide had a great vision," Moise said. "I'm afraid all
the things he did are going to be destroyed," he said of education
programs for street kids and medical clinics for the poor.
One member of an opposition coalition, which denies links with
the rebels but shares their insistence that Aristide must go,
predicted Aristide would soon fall.
"The day of deliverance has come. Aristide's departure is
imminent," opposition politician Claire Lydie Parent said on the
radio.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, visiting Libya, urged the Bush
administration to protect Aristide.
"Unless something happens immediately, the president could be
killed in our own hemisphere," Jackson said in Tripoli.
The Organization of American States held a special meeting to
discuss the crisis. Aristide's foreign minister and chief of staff
were in Paris to meet with de Villepin.
France has called for the immediate establishment of an
international civilian force to be deployed once a government of
national unity has been established, and Secretary of State Colin
Powell indicated Thursday that Washington also wants a political
solution before any international intervention.
Powell said the United States is willing to participate in any
international force sent to Haiti to enforce a political
settlement. Powell said France, Canada and Caribbean countries also
have indicated willingness to participate.
But at an open meeting of the U.N. Security Council, Jamaica's
Foreign Minister K.D. Knight argued against waiting for a political
solution.
"The situation is one of utmost urgency and the need for
decisive action is paramount," Knight said.
Haitians were fleeing their country in boats, but U.S.
authorities said the numbers were small and expressed no alarm.
The U.S. Coast Guard intercepted a dozen small boats carrying
546 Haitians near the Haitian coast this week, Coast Guard
spokesman Luis Diaz said. The would-be refugees were taken aboard
Coast Guard cutters.
"It doesn't appear to be a mass exodus," Diaz said.
Philippe, the rebel leader, would not say if an attack on the
capital was imminent.
"We're just going to take our positions and wait for the right
time. They're awaiting the order," he said in Cap-Haitien, Haiti's
second-largest city, which fell to the rebels with little
resistance on Sunday.
Philippe said the rebels already have sleeper cells in the
capital but that they would be reinforced by fighters moving in
from variety of locations.
There were no independent eyewitness reports of rebel movement,
but there also appeared to be few fighters in Cap-Haitien, where
hundreds were seen Wednesday. Cap-Haitien is just 90 miles north of
Port-au-Prince, but it is a seven-hour drive over badly potholed
roads.
Haiti's police force, just 4,000 for a country of 8 million, is
trained to deal with rioters -- not the soldiers who are among the
guerrillas. Since more than 40 officers were killed in the first 10
days of the rebellion that erupted Feb. 5, police have been
deserting posts without a rebel in sight.