19364: (Chamberlain) Rebels take key town, close in on Haitian capital (later story) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Jim Loney and Alistair Scrutton

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Rebels overran an important
crossroads town and edged closer to the Haitian capital while supporters of
embattled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide mounted defenses on Friday
against a bloody rebellion that threatened to topple his government.
     The streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince, became chaotic on Friday.
Bands of armed Aristide supporters roamed in trucks and cars. A body was
seen at a roadside near the Cite Soleil slum, apparently hacked with
machetes. Crowds of armed men blocked dozens of intersections and ignited
piles of tires.
     The stage was set for a showdown between the ragtag band of former
soldiers and gang members trying to unseat Aristide, and the diminutive
former priest and one-time populist hero of Haitian democracy backed by an
ill-trained, 4,000-member police force and armed supporters from the slums.
     Political opponents have long accused Aristide of corruption and
political thuggery.
     In Washington, U.S. defense officials said they were considering
sending a three-ship group carrying U.S. Marines to Haiti to help deal with
the crisis in the Caribbean country of 8 million, the poorest nation in the
Americas.
     Rebel leader Guy Philippe, a former police chief accused of plotting
coups who returned from exile in the Dominican Republic to join the
3-week-old revolt, said his men planned to cut off Port-au-Prince from the
ocean.
     "We going to send some boats ... to block the ships coming from Miami
to Port-au-Prince," Philippe told reporters on Friday in the country's
second-biggest city, Cap Haitien, which the rebels overran last weekend to
control a large swath of the north.
     "All the boats should come and stay in Cap Haitien so starting next
week Port-au-Prince will not receive any guns or anything.  All the boats
will come to Cap Haitien," said Philippe, who has said he wanted to
celebrate his 36th birthday on Sunday in the capital.
     Philippe has said his men had surrounded Port-au-Prince and were
awaiting orders to attack.
      A group of rebels called the "Assaillants" (Attackers) from Haiti's
Central Plateau took control of the town of Mirebalais overnight, freeing
prisoners from the local jail.
     "We showed up overnight. This was one of the cities within our
objective to conquer," a rebel soldier told Reuters television in the
streets of Mirebalais.
     Mirebalais is about 30 miles (50 km) northeast of Port-au-Prince and
sits at a junction with access to the capital, the rebel stronghold in the
north, the coastal town of Saint Marc and the border with the Dominican
Republic, where some of the rebel leaders lived in recent years.
     Haitian National Police dispatched officers to Les Cayes, Haiti's
third-largest city, to quell an uprising, a police official said. Les Cayes
is southwest of the capital, an indication the rebellion in the north was
spreading.
     Aristide, who has said repeatedly he will stay in office until his
second term expires in 2006, was also under pressure from abroad.
     French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin told a Haitian
government delegation in Paris that Aristide should quit as part of efforts
to end the rebellion, which erupted on Feb. 5 in the western city of
Gonaives and capped months of simmering tensions.
     The United States, which restored Aristide to office with an invasion
in 1994 after he was ousted in a coup three years earlier, openly
questioned whether he should remain in power in the face of a revolt that
has killed at least 65 people.
     Aristide has predicted a blood bath if the rebels enter the capital
and pleaded for international soldiers to head off a coup.
     "I would like to tell Guy Philippe and his band of criminals that
Port-au-Prince is not Gonaives or Cap Haitien," said Sony Joseph, an
Aristide loyalist surrounded by men with shotguns, pistols and rifles near
the National Palace. "They say they are coming. So we are waiting for
them."
     Dozens of Aristide loyalists stood in the streets around the palace, a
stately white building surrounded by an iron fence. Shipping containers and
debris used for barricades littered streets leading to the palace grounds.
     Looters hit the main port, carrying away goods, while Aristide
supporters stripped a warehouse belonging to businessman Smarck Michel, a
former prime minister who turned against Aristide, witnesses said.
     A negotiated end to the crisis seemed far away.
     This week, Aristide's political foes -- who have distanced themselves
from the armed revolt but share its aim of seeing Aristide gone -- rejected
power sharing and reiterated demands the president leave the palace.

  (Additional reporting by Laurent Hamida in Cap Haitien and Amy Bracken
and Joseph Guyler Delva in Port-au-Prince)