Aristide leaves Haiti amid rebellion

President Jean-Bertrand Aristide today left Haiti bowing to pressure from a rebellion at home and diplomats from abroad, his Cabinet minister and close adviser Leslie Voltaire told The Associated Press.

At least three other sources confirmed the information, including diplomats and a security aide said to have accompanied Aristide.

Voltaire said Aristide, Haiti’s first freely elected years in 200 years of independence, was flying to the Dominican Republic and would seek asylum in Morocco, Taiwan or Panama.

Aristide left as fighters in a popular rebellion that erupted three weeks ago came within 40 kilometres (25 miles) of Port-au-Prince, the capital, and threatened to attack unless he resigned.

France, Haiti’s former coloniser, and the United States, which sent 20,000 troops to restore Aristide after a coup in 1994, had called for him to step down for the good of his Caribbean nation of eight million people.

An unmarked white jet took off from Port-au-Prince’s airport early this morning, and Voltaire said Aristide was on board along with his palace security chief Frantz Gabriel.

Shortly after, a convoy of cars pulled up to the tarmac alongside a second jet. Journalists could not see who got on to that plane. It was not clear where Aristide’s wife, Mildred Trouillot Aristide, was.

The couple had sent their two daughters to Trouillot’s mother in New York last week.