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Parent Article: President Aristide Says 'I Was Kidnapped', 'Tell the World it is a Coup' |
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Haitian Rebels Enter Capital; Aristide Bitter |
by TIM WEINER and LYDIA POLGREEN
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
02 Mar 2004
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Michael Kamber/Polaris, for The New York Times
The bound hands of one of four men identified by witnesses as supporters of the deposed president who were found shot dead on Monday. A multinational peacekeeping force is expected to take over eventually.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 1 — Armed rebels swept into this capital on Monday and occupied the national police headquarters, staking a claim to power as United States forces kept watch at the international airport and the presidential palace.
A wave of dancing, cheering people following the rebel leaders flooded the boulevard to the palace minutes after the police headquarters was occupied.
No clear leader took charge. The chief justice of the Supreme Court, Boniface Alexandre, was sworn in on Sunday as the leader of a transitional government until elections in 2005. Under Haiti's Constitution, the legislature is supposed to ratify Mr. Alexandre's succession, but there is no legislature, owing to the breakdown of the government.
The deposed president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, landed in a temporary exile in the Central African Republic. He said he had been overthrown by the United States, a charge dismissed by the White House as "complete nonsense."
President Bush convened a meeting of the National Security Council on Monday to discuss a multinational peacekeeping force to take over within a few months from United States marines who landed here on Sunday.
France and Canada have pledged to help police Haiti. The United States is also discussing contributions from Caribbean nations, Brazil, Chile and Argentina.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said an international force could install a "responsive, functioning, noncorrupt" government.
He said the armed rebel leaders include "individuals we would not want to see re-enter civil society in Haiti because of their past records, and this is something we will have to work through."
At least four men identified by witnesses as supporters of the deposed president were found shot dead on the edge of town, three of them bound at the wrists.
The rebels, followed by throngs of cheering supporters, also occupied the former headquarters of the Haitian Army, vowing to revive the military, a force known for brutality. Several rebel leaders are former members of the Haitian Army and affiliated death squads.
The army overthrew Mr. Aristide in 1991 and ran a violent junta until 1994. United States armed forces reinstated the president, who then disbanded the Haitian military.
Now that he is gone, the army may be back. In the rebels' ranks at the old army headquarters was Paul Arcelin, 60, who identified himself as a former ambassador to the Dominican Republic and "an adviser to the Haitian Army."
"This is our headquarters," he said. "The army has come back. We don't need peacekeepers."
Mr. Powell told CNN: "We have ways of talking to the various rebel leaders. And I am pleased that at least so far they said they are not interested in violence any more, and they want to put down their arms."
They did not put down their guns.
Two rebel leaders, Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a former death-squad member and convicted assassin, and Guy Philippe, a former police chief, did thank the United States for moving to secure Haiti after the fall of Mr. Aristide.
"We're grateful to the United States!" Mr. Chamblain shouted through the window of his truck en route to the presidential palace.
Mr. Philippe said: "The United States soldiers are like us. We're brothers. We're grateful for their service to our nation and against the terrorists of Aristide."
These men, whom Mr. Powell characterized last week as "thugs," and a few hundred of their followers are for now the domestic face of national security in Haiti.
Several truckloads of the national police, the ineffectual force formed by Mr. Aristide after he dissolved the army in 1995, joined Mr. Chamblain's caravan after exchanging hugs and handshakes with the rebels.
Mr. Philippe vowed that the Haitian Army would rise again. "We are going to remobilize the army, constitutionally," he said. "We are going to make a new Haiti."
Mr. Chamblain drove down to the capital from the town of St.-Marc this morning in a caravan of about a dozen vehicles, stopping at two national police stations, where he was embraced. Mr. Philippe drove down from Gonaïves, where the uprising against Mr. Aristide began Feb. 5.
Many rebels wore surplus United States military garb. One sported a souvenir Drug Enforcement Administration baseball cap. They all carried assault weapons, carbines and handguns.
As they entered the heart of Port-au-Prince, heading up Martin Luther King Boulevard, other trucks and vans joined them, including one with a sign reading, "Liberation Front — Armed Forces of Haiti."
The procession grew like a river fed by rivulets in a heavy rain, ending in a small sea of humanity at the presidential palace. By the palace gates stood Americans wearing the uniforms and insignia of marines and the State Department's diplomatic security service.
Col. David Berger, head of the Marine contingent based at the airport, said the capital was "definitely not a hostile environment."
Mr. Aristide's home in the suburb of Tavarre was sacked overnight. A grand piano lay amid the rubble.
Joy at his departure was hardly universal. Jackson Thomas, 32, who lives in La Saline, a tough slum where Mr. Aristide's strongest support lay, said: "It's a violation of our Constitution. This president was elected for five years. It feels like we don't have any friends in the international community."
Historians and folklorists of Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, are fond of citing a Haitian proverb: "The Constitution is made of paper; the bayonet is made of steel."
There is another political force here: the unarmed opposition, a broad but very loosely knit group dominated by wealthy and politically sophisticated people, including former Aristide supporters.
Some of their leaders said they had met with the American ambassador on Monday afternoon. The American Embassy had no comment.
Charles Baker, a well-to-do businessman, said the unarmed opposition, under the guidance of the United States, was trying to form an unofficial ruling coalition, an unelected council of elders to run Haiti.
The unarmed opposition has maintained publicly, since the uprising began Feb. 5, that while they shared the goals of the armed rebels in ousting Mr. Aristide, they had no taste for their methods and no real contact with them.
It might prove difficult, not to mention dangerous, to exclude the armed rebels from that council.
After streaming into the capital, the leaders of the armed rebels and the unarmed opposition gathered at a hotel called El Rancho, some sipping beer, others strutting in camouflage gear past the swimming pool.
The upper-class opponents of Mr. Aristide made uneasy talk among themselves. The sweaty soldiers and rebel leaders exchanged hugs and grins. The men with the guns seemed to be in charge.
The new faces of leadership included a well-spoken man near the pool at El Rancho, with an M-4 assault weapon strapped around his neck, who gave his name as Faustin. He said he was an industrial engineer educated in the United States.
"Right now it's very euphoric; everybody's happy," he said. "But behind that happiness, look out." He said he had killed former Aristide supporters in the streets of Port-au-Prince in the last month, and would kill again in the name of the new government if so ordered.
"I'm not a loose cannon," he said. "I report to someone. But I won't tell you who."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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