Haiti asks for foreign help, US rebuffs call

by Dominique Levanti

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP): Faced with spreading rebellion, Haiti appealed Tuesday for foreign help, but the United States rebuffed the call, telling the government to focus on fundamental reform and warning rebels against a violent takeover.

France, however, said it would consider sending peacekeepers and UN chief Kofi Annan said he was mulling some kind of action on the Caribbean island gripped by an uprising against President Jean Bertrand Aristide.

Haitian Prime Minister Yvon Neptune said international assistance was needed following nearly two weeks of violence which have left dozens dead and seen a number of towns fall into the hands of Aristide's opponents.

"The police force is young, the number of police is insufficient," Neptune said, adding that it was the "duty of the international community" to step in to help.

Haitian ambassador to Cuba Marie Andrine Constant said from Havana that her government would prefer a police force set up by the Organization of American States (OAS).

But US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in Washington there was "no enthusiasm" in the administration of President George W. Bush at this point for any kind of involvement in Haiti.

Discussions last week with Canada, the Caribbean Community and the OAS were about "sending in police to sustain a political settlement, not to go in and put down the current violence," Powell said.

"What we want to do right now is to find a political solution, and then there are willing nations that would come forward with a police presence to implement the political agreement that the sides come to," he said.

The White House urged Aristide to take "essential steps" to change the way his violence-wracked nation is governed as well as the security situation there.

"And so we would call on President Aristide to make sure he implements those essential steps to address those matters," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

Canada drove home a similar message. "Canada will go forward if there a political solution," Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham said in Ottawa.

Meanwhile, US ambassador James Foley had a message for the rebels, warning them that the United States will not recognize a government that takes power by force.

France, which ruled what is now Haiti in the 18th century, said it was considering sending a peacekeeping force to the troubled Caribbean nation of eight million.

In Paris, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said that France, with overseas territories in the Caribbean and South America, was in a position to rapidly deploy resources to Haiti, and that several other countries were also ready to act.

But de Villepin later told France-2: "An intervention force implies a stop to violence, the resumption of dialogue. Nothing will be possible if there's no jumpstart" to this process.

Almost two weeks into an armed uprising in the poorest country in the Americas, insurgents seeking Aristide's ouster claimed control of the central town of Hinche on Tuesday, one day after killing the district police chief and two others.

Former paramilitary leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain told AFP that a group of men under his command "control" Hinche as a throng greeted him in a carnival atmosphere in the nearby city of Maissade.

Hinche's police station was in ruins but no more violence was reported, although rebels left behind a prisoner whose corpse was eaten by a pack of wild dogs.

The attack in Hinche, a town of 87,000 in the center of the country, pushed the death toll to more than 55 since February 5, when armed opponents seized Gonaives in the north. That strategically important town of some 200,000 remains firmly in rebel hands.

Chamblain said he hopes to march into Port-au-Prince with the Gonaives rebels.

Haiti has been racked by turmoil for more than two decades since the end of the Duvalier dictatorships that ruled with terror and plundered its riches.

Aristide, who has vowed to stay in office until his term ends in February 2006, has been ruling by decree after failed elections last year left Haiti without a functioning legislature.

The populist priest turned president has promised polls within six months but has not set a date.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton sent 20,000 troops to return Aristide to power after he was ousted in a bloody coup.

  Back...

  Most popular articles: viewed, printed and e-mailed

  Printable version