Haitian rebel leader threatens to arrest Prime Minister

Rebels began patrolling the streets of the Haitian capital as rebel leader Guy Philippe declared himself the new chief of the military and threatened to arrest the country’s prime minister.

“The country is in my hands!” Philippe announced yesterday on the radio in between touring Port-au-Prince in the back of a pick-up truck and greeting throngs of admiring Haitians.

“This is one of darker moments in Haiti’s history,” said Brian Concannon, who had successfully prosecuted another rebel leader, Louis-Jodel Chamblain, in absentia for a 1994 massacre. “I’m extremely afraid for all people who have fought for democracy because they all could be killed.”

Chamblain said rebel patrols may go to the Cite Soleil seaside slum that is a stronghold of die-hard supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

US Marine Colonel Dave Berger told a news conference that the Marines, who began arriving on Sunday night hours after Mr Aristide left the country for exile in Africa, will increase their presence throughout Haiti following Philippe’s comments.

Two US Chinook helicopters slowly circled yesterday over Philippe’s base, the rebel-held northern port of Cap-Haitien, on an apparent reconnaissance mission, said a resident reached by telephone. Some US Marines patrolled Port-au-Prince’s seaport, which was being looted, in a Humvee.

The US and French troops in Haiti – the vanguard of an international peacekeeping force authorised by the UN Security Council – have no orders to disarm Haiti’s factions and instead are to secure key sites and protect their countries’ citizens and government property, said Col Berger and the commander of the French forces.

The Pentagon said there would be some 400 US Marines in Haiti by yesterday. Chile said it was sending 120 special forces to Haiti today, the first of about 300 Chileans to join the international force. France said it would have some 420 soldiers and police in place by the end of the week.

Philippe, meanwhile, appeared on the second-floor balcony of the colonnaded former army headquarters and raised a fist as hundreds of onlookers wildly cheered. A burly rebel standing next to Philippe urged them to accompany the rebel chief to Prime Minister Yvon Neptune’s house.

“Arrest Neptune!” the crowd chanted.

Hours later, some 300 people gathered outside the gates of Mr Neptune’s office, guarded by a handful of US Marines. The crowd again demanded the Prime Minister’s arrest.

“The head is gone, but the tail remains!” they chanted.

The whereabouts of Mr Neptune, a top member of Mr Aristide’s Lavalas party and his former presidential spokesman, were unknown. Radio reports said he had been evacuated by helicopter.

Speaking in Washington, Assistant US Secretary of State Roger Noriega said Philippe had no real power even as his rebels sought to take advantage of a power vacuum.

“He is not in control of anything but a ragtag band of people,” Mr Noriega said.

The buildup of the UN-authorised international peacekeeping presence in Haiti will make Philippe’s role “less and less central in Haitian life. And I think he will probably want to make himself scarce”, he said.

But Philippe, who arrived in Port-au-Prince in a rebel convoy on Monday, apparently plans on transforming his fighters into a reconstituted Haitian army, which Mr Aristide disbanded in 1995.

He said he was ready to follow the orders of interim President Boniface Alexandre, the chief justice of the Supreme Court who was installed on Sunday.

Mr Aristide, the country’s first democratically elected leader since independence from France, resigned following a rebel uprising that has killed more than 100 people since early February.