Haitian premier pleads for international aid
Former colonial power France said it may send troops in, but US Secretary of State Colin Powell ruled out committing soldiers or police to halt a bloody uprising that threatens a fragile democracy.
He renewed his appeal for political settlement between President Jean-Bertrand Aristede and opposition groups. Prime Minister Yvon Neptune made his appeal after former soldiers joined the rebellion and seized the key central town of Hinche, raising the potential for a full-scale civil war and a return to the dark days when the army killed and tortured opponents in what was know as the Voodoo Isle.
"We are witnessing the coup d'état machine in motion," Mr Neptune said in the capital Port-au-Prince. He said Haiti's 5,000-member police force was ill-equipped to respond and that he expected the international community "to show that it really wants peace and stability in Haiti".
He refused to say if that meant a military intervention, and President Jean-Bertrand Aristide said on Monday he had asked the Organisation of American States only for "technical assistance". Rebels have driven police out of more than a dozen towns in 12 days and control most roads in the Artibonite district, Haiti's breadbasket and home to almost one million of the country's eight million people.
But Mr Powell said "there is frankly no enthusiasm right now for sending in military or police forces to put down the violence that we are seeing". He said the international community wants to see "a political solution" and only then would willing nations offer a police presence to implement such an agreement.
France, Haiti's former coloniser, said it was weighing the risks of sending in peacekeepers.
"Can we deploy a peacekeeping force?" Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin asked on France-Inter radio, noting it "is very difficult" when a nation is in the throes of violence. He said France had 4,000 troops in its Caribbean territories of Martinique and Guadeloupe trained in humanitarian needs and that: "We are in contact with all of our partners in the framework of the United Nations, which has sent a humanitarian mission to Haiti to see what is possible."
Two hundred years ago, escaped Haitian slaves defeated Napoleon's troops in the world's only successful slave revolt. The United States has staged three military interventions in Haiti, the last in 1994 when it sent 20,000 troops to end a military dictatorship that had ousted Aristide and halt an influx of Haitian boatpeople to Florida.
Aristide is accused of using the police and armed militants to stifle dissent and allowing corrupt officials to enrich themselves while Haitians suffer deepening poverty.
