Aristide loyalists fire on protesters

Militants loyal to Haiti’s President Jean-Bertrand Aristide have attacked protesters demanding he resign with barrages of shotgun fire, stones and bottles.

The violence came as diplomats presented a peace plan for which government and opposition leaders showed little enthusiasm.

Scores of foreigners are streaming out of Haiti, acting on a warning from the US to flee mounting violence in government-held areas and threats of new rebel attacks in the north over Carnival weekend.

Yesterday, anti-government protesters marched down the main road leading to Port-au-Prince international airport denouncing any plan that does not demand Mr Aristide step down.

“Aristide’s a scorpion,” they chanted.

They were confronted by Aristide supporters who lobbed rocks and bottles and then opened fire.

About 14 people were injured and wounded, including a Haitian journalist shot twice in the back. Four foreign reporters were beaten up. One was slashed by a machete and only saved by his helmet.

Two of the key points of the international plan are disarming politically motivated street gangs and setting rules for political demonstrations.

Diplomats from a host of nations were to arrive today to persuade Haiti’s politicians to agree, apparently hoping that pressure from the two-week old popular uprising that has killed more than 60 people will impel them to a compromise they have resisted for years.

The plan was presented yesterday, but even before it arrived both sides indicated reluctance.

“We don’t expect much from the delegation,” said opposition spokesman Paul Denis of the team to be led by Roger Noriega, the top US diplomat for the Western Hemisphere.

“If it wants to resolve the crisis the question of Aristide’s resignation must be on the table,” he said.

Mr Aristide has shown determination to serve out his term that ends in February 2006 and said he could not negotiate with “terrorists” repeating charges that the opposition supports the bloody rebellion.

Yesterday, his government spokesman, Mario Dupuy, said: “The government hopes the mission will be able to detach the opposition from acts and actors of violence ... the opposition has a chance to prove it is not in favour of violence and terrorism.”

Mr Aristide agreed months ago to the main tenets of the plan, then presented by the 15-nation Caribbean Community, but he has done nothing to act on it.

A key requirement is the appointment of a prime minister acceptable to both sides – something they have not been able to agree on since flawed legislative elections in 2000 were swept by Mr Aristide’s Lavalas Party.

Mr Aristide, who won Haiti’s first free elections in a landslide in 1990, has lost support since his reelection. Haiti’s chronic misery has deepened since international donors froze aid while the President is seen as condoning corruption that provides lavish lifestyles for government officials.

The former slum priest has responded to growing opposition by using police and armed gangs to stifle dissent and create a climate of fear.

In Haiti today, life appears more dangerous in places like the western port of St Marc, where radio stations reported that Aristide thugs torched 15 houses on Thursday night, setting blazes that killed three people.

In Cap-Haitien, the last major government bastion in the north, frightened police officers have barricaded themselves in their station and left the streets to armed government supporters terrorising the population.

By comparison, rebels who began their uprising on February 5 in Gonaives, a strategic crossroad to the north 70 miles north west of Port-au-Prince, this week allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross through barricades of shipping containers to deliver sorely needed food and medical supplies.

The rebels have fired shots in the air to control near-riots at food distributions and hungry residents looting a food aid warehouse under their control, but no one has been killed in that situation.

French Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere warned at the UN yesterday that the chaos “cannot but lead to a humanitarian catastrophe”.

Yesterday, the day after the US government urged its citizens to leave Haiti, more than 200 people from the US, France and Canada stood in long lines at the airport, anxious to get out.

“We knew that it was right for us to leave. It’s just hard,” said Nancy McWilliams, an 18-year-old from Ottawa who abandoned a volunteer job at a children’s home in Cap-Haitien.

Around 30,000 foreigners live in Haiti, including 20,000 US citizens, 1,600 French and more than 1,000 Canadians.

All US-bound flights in and out of Haiti now have air marshals because of hijacking fears, officials in Washington said.