caribbean roundup

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – Militants demanding the return of oust-ed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide hurled rocks and set barricades of flaming tires ablaze, blocking a main road of Haiti’s capital and threatening renewed turmoil as the country waited to hear who will be the new prime minister.

The body of a man lay near the barricade, with gunshot wounds. The circumstances of his killing were not im-mediately clear. The toll from a month-long rebellion and reprisal killings rose to more than 300, with the Pan-Ame-rican Health Organization reporting an estimated 200 corpses rotting at the capital’s state morgue were those of victims of the violence.

Newly appointed officials were meet-ing Tuesday to pick a new prime minister from three top candidates – ignoring Aristide’s claim from his faraway asylum in the Central African Repub-lic that he remains Haiti’s democratically elected leader.

At his first public appearance since his departure, Aristide recently re-newed allegations that he was abducted and forced from power by the Uni-ted States – claims strongly denied by U.S. officials who say they saved his life.

Aristide called on his followers to offer a "peaceful resistance’’ to what he called "an occupation.’’

U.S. Marines started arriving the day he left Haiti, leading a vanguard of peacekeepers that included about 1,600 Marines, 800 French legionnaires and police, 130 Chilean troops and about 70 Canadian troops.

The U.S. Marines denied reports that they were fired on recently in the down-town Bel-Air neighborhood that is a stronghold of Aristide, as protesters marched and chanted "Aristide or death!’’ No Marine casualties were reported.

Military helicopters circled over the slum neighborhoods filled with Aristide supporters, and Marines patrolled in armored cars and on foot in downtown Port-au-Prince.

"What the Americans did was a sham,’’ said Bertrand Exilus, a 32-year- old tailor. "We elected Aristide. We did not elect Alexandre. George W. Bush does not respect democracy.’’

He spoke outside the National Pal-ace where Supreme Court Chief Justice Boniface Alexandre was installed as interim president, under a U.S.-backed transitional plan.

"We are facing both the humanitarian needs of the existing population, and the task of organizing good elections which will allow the country to get out of this political and social crisis which has pushed it to the brink of civil war,’’ Alexandre said before he was congratulated by foreign diplomats.

He made no reference to Aristide’s claim that he is Haiti’s president in exile.

In Washington, U.S. State Depart-ment spokesman Richard Boucher in-sisted that Aristide had voluntarily res-igned.

"If Mr. Aristide really wants to serve his country, he really has to, we think, let his nation get on with the future and not tryto stir up the past again,’’ Bou-cher said.

A seven-member Council of Sages was to name a new prime minister Tuesday, to form a transitional government from Aristide’s Lavalas party and a disparate opposition coalition. That government would call new elections.

Candidates for Prime Minister are:

• Businessman Smarck Michel, Aristide’s prime minister in 1994-1995 who resigned over differences in economic policy.

• Retired Lt. Gen. Herard Abraham, who is probably the only Haitian army officer to voluntarily surrender power to a civilian, in 1990. He allowed the transition that led to Haiti’s first free elections in December 1990, which Aris-tide won in a landslide.

• Gerard Latortue, a former U.N. official and an international business consultant who was foreign minister in 1988 to former President Leslie Manigat.

Manigat was toppled in one of the 32 coups fomented by Haiti’s army. That same army ousted Aristide in 1991 and was disbanded after 20,000 U.S. troops came to Haiti in 1994 to halt an exodus of boat people to Florida and restore democracy.

A frenzy of looting that erupted the day before Aristide’s flight and waned with the arrival of peacekeepers re-surged. Hundreds of people ransacked Port-au-Prince’s industrial park, carrying away wood paneling, toilets, even a plastic Mickey Mouse.

One looter wore the top part of horse costume on his head as he made off with a mirror. The looting took place less than a kilometer (half a mile) from the international airport where U.S. Marines have set up base.

Associated Press Television News footage showed security guards shooting to scare off the looters, then calling in the Marines for help. Some Marines fired mace in the face of would-be looters trying to climb a wall, a U.S. Navy medic bandaged a woman’s foot after she was shot.

Monday’s pro-Aristide demonstration was mostly peaceful, a sharp contrast to the massive anti-Aristide pro-test a day before in which gunmen opened fire, killing six people.

U.S. Marines said they shot one gun-man at a recent demonstration, raising the toll to seven. "He had a gun and he was shooting at Marines,’’ Col. Charles Gurganus told reporters.

Gurganus said they did not know who the man was or the location of his body. They also didn’t have his alleged weapon, he said, because someone at the scene snatched it.

The violence was the worst bloodshed since Aristide fled. It prompted the first armed action by the Marines and led both opponents and supporters of Aristide to threaten their own armed action, damaging efforts to reach a frail peace.

Chief rebel leader Guy Philippe said Sunday’s attack never would have hap-pened if his men had not been asked to lay down their arms. He warned that "I will reunite my men and take up arms’’ if the peacekeepers do not disarm militant Aristide loyalists blamed for attack.

"Why did the Americans come here?’’ Philippe asked reporters . "No amount of tanks or planes can solve this problem. This is a Haitian problem that Haiti must solve.’’

Later, Philippe met with opposition leader Evans Paul. The two had been slated to discuss reconstituting Haiti’s disgraced army. However, there were no details on what they talked about.

Ex-Sgt. Joseph Jean-Baptiste, a spokesman for rebels in the Central Plateau district and head of an association of disbanded soldiers, asked that peacekeepers keep out of his area.

"We at the Haitian armed forces need somewhere where we can reassemble ourselves and where we can wait for the response the new Haitian authorities will give for the future of the army,’’ he said on private radio station Vision 2000.

Aristide was a wildly popular slum priest, elected on promises to champion the poor who make up the vast majority of Haiti’s 8 million people. But he has lost support, with Haitians saying he failed to improve their lives, condoned corruption and used police and armed supporters to attack his political opponents.

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) – An-gered by why President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced to flee his country, the 15-nation Caribbean Community said it will not provide troops for the U.N. peacekeeping force to Haiti.

The regional bloc also called for an independent international inquiry, possibly under the auspices of the United Nations, into allegations that U.S. troops forced Aristide from office.

Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Pat-terson said that Aristide’s apparent forced departure from office constituted a "very dangerous precedent not only for Haiti, but also for democratically-elected leaders and governments throughout the world.’’

Patterson, speaking in harsh terms on behalf of the economic bloc to which Haiti belongs, said Caribbean leaders were "extremely disappointed’’ at the involvement of "Western partners’’ in the hasty departure of Aristide, who has said he was abducted at gunpoint by U.S. Marines.

U.S. officials have denied the accusations from Aristide and others that he was kidnapped.

"We deprecate in the strongest possible terms, anything which has the effect of removing by unconstitutional means persons who have been truly elected to office,’’ added Patterson, who is also current chairman of the Caribbean Community.

Patterson wondered why the U.N. Security Council had ignored an urgent Caribbean appeal to it to send peacekeepers to Haiti.

"We believe that we put forward a very compelling case before the Security Council on Thursday of last week. The Security Council failed to respond then. We could not fail to observe that what was impossible on Thursday could be accomplished in an emergency meeting on Sunday. We are disappointed in the extreme at the failure to act,’’ Pat-terson said.

"In the prevailing circumstances, the leaders do not envisage their participation in the multinational peacekeeping force authorized by the U.N. Security Council,’’ the leaders said in a statement ending an emergency meeting on Haiti.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (AP) – Thousands attended the funeral of former Prime Minister Harold St. John with friends remembering him as re-lentless in his efforts toward achieving Caribbean integration.

St. John died Feb. 29 at the age of 72 after losing a long battle with cancer.

About 150 police and soldiers es-corted his flag-draped casket – carried in a gun carriage drawn by an army jeep – through the constituency he represented for decades.

Residents lined the streets, some crying as the procession paused for two minutes outside the Oistins fish market which he is credited with de-veloping.

A few hundred fish vendors and fishermen lined both sides of the street outside the market dressed in black.

Black flags hung from utility poles and in trees along the route from the funeral home to the church. He was buried at the Christ Church Parish Church cemetery which is on a hill overlooking Oistins where his family residence is located.