- PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP)
-- Rebels seeking to oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide seized a strategic
town Friday and said they will blockade the chaotic capital to "close
the circle'' around the embattled leader. Aristide said he would not step
down.
-
- Pentagon officials are weighing the possibility of sending
troops to waters off Haiti to guard against a possible refugee crisis and
to protect the estimated 20,000 Americans there.
-
- Aristide, under increasing pressure to relinquish power
from the United States and the rebels, told CNN that ``I have the responsibility
as an elected president to stay where I am.''
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- Chaos increasingly engulfed the capital city. Armed thugs
hijacked cars at will. Looters hit the capital's seaport, stealing almost
everything thing in sight and setting ablaze a freight terminal. Crowds
jammed into the airport, only to find most flights canceled.
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- Hundreds of people looted Port-au-Prince's seaport, scurrying
out with boxes of melting chicken parts and pork loins strapped to their
backs. Others streamed out with television sets, table lamps, furniture
and other goods.
-
- Smoke wafted from the smoldering ruins of a torched freight
terminal. No police were in sight. The body of a dead man lay on the ground
amid a layer of papers and other trash; it was unclear how he was killed.
-
- The bodies of two executed men also lay a few blocks
from the presidential National Palace.
-
- Shops put up hurricane shutters against looters, and
people stayed home behind locked doors, leaving the streets to gangs of
pro-Aristide thugs who hijacked cars, robbed people at barricades and roamed
the street on foot yelling "Five years, five years.'' Aristide was
elected to a five-year term that ends February 2006.
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- A few police patrolled in cars, but were vastly outnumbered
by the militants.
-
- The rebels, who have overrun at least half of Haiti since
they began the uprising three weeks ago, closed in on the seaside capital
in a pincer movement, overrunning villages as police fled.
-
- Police officers in Croix-des-Bouquets, just nine miles
northeast of Port-au-Prince, shed their uniforms for civilian clothes,
appeared to have abandoned their guns and looked ready to flee.
-
- Guy Philippe, commander of the motley group of Haitian
rebels, said he intended to besiege the capital and ``close the circle''
around Aristide.
-
- "We want to block Port-au-Prince totally,'' he told
reporters in Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city, which the rebels
seized on Sunday. He said the rebels would try to cut land routes into
the capital and would send two boats to attempt to prevent ships from bringing
in supplies.
-
- "Port-au-Prince now ... would be very hard to take
it. It would be a lot of fight, a lot of death,'' Philippe said. ``So what
we want is desperation first.''
-
- That strategy threatens further misery to residents,
already lining up for scarce gas and dwindling fresh produce since the
rebels cut supplies from the central Artibonite district, which is Haiti's
breadbasket.
-
- Human Rights Watch warned of "widespread bloodshed
and indiscriminate destruction of civilian property'' if the rebels attacked
Port-au-Prince.
-
- Philippe said the rebels encountered little resistance
as they closed in on the capital.
-
- On Friday, rebels were seen by an Associated Press reporter
in Mirebalais, 25 miles northeast of Port-au-Prince sitting astride a strategic
crossroad leading west to the government-held town of St. Marc, south to
the capital, east to the Dominican Republic and north into territory where
the rebels have chased police from a score of towns.
-
- The rebels arrived in a truck, firing their guns, and
freed 67 prisoners, said David Joseph, a 40-year-old law student. He said
most of the fighters then left in two commandeered cars.
-
- As he spoke, about a dozen rebels, some wearing camouflage,
patrolled in a truck.
-
- "I would gladly join them if I had a gun,'' Joseph
said.
-
- Philippe said rebels occupied part of Jeremie, in their
first sortie on Haiti's western peninsula.
-
- Also on the peninsula, Haiti's third-largest city, the
southern port of Les Cayes, fell Thursday to the Base Resistance, a rebel
faction whose origins and alliances were not immediately clear.
-
- Robbins Jean, an Aristide youth organizer, criticized
the United States for pressuring Aristide.
-
- "You tell George W. Bush he is a hypocrite and an
assassin because the terrorists are killing the Haitian people,'' Jean,
25, told a reporter near the National Palace, where hundreds of youths
- armed with old rifles and pistols, machetes and even a dull, rusty ax
- gathered to repel any rebels.
-
- "We will fight to the death,'' Jean declared.
-
- In Paris, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin
met with Aristide's chief of staff Jean-Claude Desgranges and his Foreign
Minister Joseph Antonio and repeated his call for Aristide to resign.
-
- "It's for President Aristide, who bears a heavy
responsibility in the current situation, to draw the consequences of the
impasse,'' officials said de Villepin told the Haitians. It was not clear
how the message was received. Antonio abruptly canceled a scheduled news
conference.
-
- The rebellion erupted Feb. 5 in western Gonaives, the
fourth-largest city. About 80 people, half of them police officers, have
been killed so far.
-
- The crisis has been brewing since Aristide's party swept
flawed legislative elections in 2000 and international donors froze millions
of dollars in aid.
-
- Aristide, a former priest of Haiti's slums who in 1990
became its first freely elected leader, has lost popularity amid accusations
he condoned corruption, failed to help the poor and had thugs attack political
opponents.
-
- He has agreed to a U.S.-backed plan that requires him
to share power with his opponents, but the political opposition rejected
the proposal, insisting he resign.
-
- A senior U.S. official said the Bush administration has
concluded that the best way to prevent the insurgents from seizing power
is for Aristide should resign and transfer power to Supreme Court Chief
Justice Boniface Alexandre, his constitutional successor. He is known in
Haiti for his honesty.
-
- - Associated Press reporter Ian James contributed to
this report from Cap-Haitien and AP reporters Michael Norton and Mark Stevenson
from Port-au-Prince.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3798346,00.html
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