Smiles & Anger For Haiti Marines

Streets Quiet For Now; Central African Rep. Offers Aristide Asylum

(CBS/AP)  U.S. Marines trained their rifles down gritty streets and into a teeming market as they patrolled the Haitian capital with other peacekeepers Thursday, drawing smiles and a few angry words, but no resistance.

Hatred is still simmering among various factions nearly a week after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in a rebellion that left at least 130 people dead, with new killings discovered outside Port-au-Prince.

As the Marines rolled into the looted port area in eight Light Armored Vehicles and ventured into the crowds, onlookers gathered around in curiosity but showed no fear.

At one point, a Marine poured a canteen of water over his head to cool off in the sweltering heat, drawing chuckles from passers-by.

"I feel much safer now the Marines are here," said Frantz Labissiere, 44. "I wouldn't be here if the Marines weren't here."

But not everyone shared his view. As the convoy passed an angry knot of people, one youth shouted: "You took our president — now you're taking our country!"

Others held up photographs of Aristide, who fled the country Sunday as rebels neared the outskirts of the capital and the United States and former colonial ruler France pressed him to resign.

Haiti's first freely elected leader lost a lot of popularity in Haiti — and in Washington, which restored him to power in 1994 after he was ousted in a 1991 military coup — because he allegedly used militant loyalists to attack and intimidate his opponents, failed to help the poor and condoned corruption. Aristide, in exile in the Central African Republic, has denied the accusations.

The Central African Republic will offer him permanent asylum if he asks but would find it difficult to pay for his upkeep, the government said Thursday.

"I can't say definitively if Mr. Aristide will stay here or if he'll go, but if he asks us, we won't refuse him," Communications Minister Parfait Mbaye told The Associated Press in Bangui.

The day after he arrived, Aristide told reporters and members of the U.S. Congress from Bangui that he had been abducted at gunpoint by U.S. Marines and forced to leave his country.

Mbaye repeated denials of Aristide's claims that he is a prisoner in Bangui. Mbaye said Aristide has "a particular status, which requires him to remain more or less stationary."

Just before his departure from the presidential residence, a senior State Department official said Aristide was speaking with Luis Moreno, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Haiti, who was there in 1994 when Aristide was restored to power, reports CBS News State Department Reporter Charles Wolfson.

According to the senior official, Moreno recalled with Aristide how "hopeful" he was at the time for Haiti and said to Aristide he was "sorry to see how it all worked out." Aristide's reply, in English, was "that's life, sometimes," Wolfson reports.

The killing of Haitians continued, despite the arrival of the U.S. Marines and French troops as the vanguard of a U.N. peacekeeping mission, as well as a pledge by rebel leader Guy Philippe that his men would disarm.

In Gressier, six miles west of Port-au-Prince, the bodies of four men were seen in the street Thursday. All were shot in the head and three had their hands tied behind their backs — two with rope, one with a shirt. The fourth man's hands weren't tied and it appeared he may have been trying to flee when he was shot.

Some Haitians doubted Philippe's pledge and the arrival of peacekeepers would end revenge killings.

"The rebels want to take over the country," said Gracious Laguenne, a tailor. "As soon as the Americans leave, they're going to come back and it will be the same thing all over again."

On Thursday, Philippe traded his military clothes for a blue polo shirt and jeans and said he wants go to "many cities, to see how people are living and how I can help."

The St. Petersburg Times, meanwhile, reported Thursday that looters found stacks of $100 bills — possibly as much as $350,000 — in a hidden safe at Aristide's mansion in suburban Tabarre. The bills were either crumbling into dust or stuck together so tightly that they couldn't be pulled apart, the newspaper said.

As the Marines expanded their control over the capital, merchants began cleaning off pro-Aristide graffiti. A worker wiped "Viv Aristide" off the metal gates of an auto dealership.

The Marines cleared debris from barricades that had been built by Aristide militants to protect the city from the rebels. Others used mechanical hooks atop Humvees to lift concrete barriers.

A few gas stations opened and long lines grew. The colorfully painted tap-tap pickups that are the most popular form of transport took to the road. Charcoal vendors set up shop on the sidewalks, as did shoeshine boys and women selling fruit and vegetables.

Daphnee Saintilima, trying to sell papayas, voiced the preoccupation of most people in this country, where two-thirds of the 8 million people go hungry every day.

"The most important thing for me is to feed my family. I'm tired of politics. Politics doesn't feed me," she said.

But for some, the foreign peacekeepers are an occupying force cementing Aristide's removal.

"People are still angry" at Aristide's departure, said Marie-Claude Augustine, 46. "Just because we have tanks patrolling, it doesn't make things better. The rebels need to just go and so do the Americans."

Chilean troops joined the force, with 120 arriving at the Port-au-Prince airport. Another 220 were expected in the next two days, said Chilean Ambassador Marcel Young.