Monday, July 17, 2006

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP): Several thousand Haitian demonstrated peacefully Saturday under armed United Nations escort for the return of their deposed leader Jean Bertrand Aristide from South African exile.

The demonstration delivered a warning shot to the two-month rule of President Rene Preval, which has already been shaken by an resurgence of gang violence that claimed some 20 lives over the past week.

Preval ran for office on the premise that he was open to the return of Aristide, who fled Haiti in February 2004 as an armed uprising bore down on the capital.

"We vote for Rene Preval to obtain the return of our leader" Aristide, said one of the march's organizers Andre Michelet.

The demonstrators, some wearing t-shirts with Aristide's image, gathered in the capital's poorest district before moving through other parts of the city and finally dispersing in front of the presidential palace amid a heavy presence of UN peacekeepers, some driving tanks.

"Everything passed off well. There were no incidents," a police spokesman said.

The demonstrators also demanded the return of all exiled Haitians and the release of "political prisoners."

Aristide, 52, had long maintained that he had been forced to step down under pressure from the United States and France and had urged the African Union to take up his claims of a coup.

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