- WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- President
Bush ordered on Sunday the deployment of U.S. Marines to Haiti to deter
rebels from grabbing power after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigned
under American pressure in the face of an armed rebellion.
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- Criticized for responding slowly to defuse the revolt
and for failing to mediate a viable alternative to Aristide, Washington
was worried rebels would fill a power vacuum in a nation with a history
of coups and political violence.
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- "I have ordered the deployment of Marines as the
leading element of an interim international force to help bring order and
stability to Haiti," Bush told reporters at the White House.
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- Canada said the Marines would land on Sunday in the Caribbean
nation, where rebels control half of the country.
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- "I understand from speaking to (Secretary of State)
Colin Powell this morning that the Americans will be landing troops there
today at the invitation of course of the (new Haitian) president,"
Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham told CTV television.
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- "In the meantime the United States and others in
the (U.N.) Security Council will be obtaining a Chapter Seven resolution
which will enable an international force to go in," he said.
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- In New York, a group of "Friends of Haiti,"
including the United States, France, Canada, Caribbean nations and others,
met on Sunday to work on a draft United Nations resolution authorizing
a multinational force to intervene in Haiti.
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- The United States, which restored Aristide to power a
decade ago after a coup, helped the president fly out of Haiti and needed
to shore up support for a transitional government, a State Department official
said.
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- "The wild card here is the rebels. Are they with
the program?" he said. "We want to make sure we neutralize them.
Not necessarily by going after them but the timely insertion of some kind
of deterrent is important."
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- Powell communicated with Aristide throughout the night
by calling the U.S. ambassador to deliver messages to him, a senior State
department official said.
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- Powell also called his counterparts in France, Caribbean
and other nations to find a country to take the exile in, he added, without
saying where Aristide was headed.
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- Initially U.S. troops would make up the bulk of the international
force in Haiti, which is several hundred miles from Florida, the official,
who asked not be named, said.
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- The U.S. Ambassador to Haiti James Foley urged the rebels
who forced out the president to lay down their arms.
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- Despite U.S. forces being stretched in deployments in
Iraq and Afghanistan, defense officials said on Friday the United States
was considering sending three warships with about 2,000 Marines.
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- ARISTIDE PRESSURED TO RESIGN
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- During this month's spreading revolt, the United States
rejected Aristide's pleas for foreign troops and said it would organize
an international security force only once Haitians hammered out a political
solution.
-
- After it failed to mediate a power-sharing accord with
the opposition, Washington increasingly blamed Aristide for fomenting the
violence and pressured him to resign.
-
- One Bush administration official said, "Aristide
made the right decision for the Haitian people by resigning."
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- Critics said the hands-off U.S. strategy effectively
pushed the democratically-elected leader from power without paving the
way for a widely acceptable successor in the poorest nation in the Western
Hemisphere.
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- U.S. civil rights leader Jesse Jackson called Aristide's
resignation "an American-assisted coup" and said, "Bush
made it clear ... he would offer no assistance to stop the military overthrow
of the government."
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- With rebels controlling half of the country, the U.S.
tactic on Sunday was to try to keep them at bay to win time for Haitians
to organize a transition according to their constitution. That would allow
the Supreme Court chief to become head of state.
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- A senior administration official said Aristide's departure
was a relief but did not mean the end of the crisis. "We managed to
stave that off. But we are heading into another dangerous period because
any vacuum in Haiti could also be dangerous," he said on condition
of anonymity.
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- The United States restored Aristide to power in 1994
with 20,000 troops. But Washington has been increasingly frustrated at
the former priest and since 2000 has been key in restricting international
aid to the government to punish him for allowing flawed parliamentary elections.
-
- -Additional reporting by Adam Entous, Charles Aldinger
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