Haiti Rebel Chief Takes Command

Rebel leader Guy Philippe on Tuesday declared himself the new chief of Haiti's military, which had been disbanded by ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Flanked by other rebel leaders and senior officers of Haiti's police force, Philippe told a news conference: "I am the chief." Asked what he meant, he said, "the military chief."

"I am not interested in politics," he said. "The president is the legal president, so we follow his orders," he said.

Haiti's Supreme Court Chief Justice Boniface Alexandre was installed as interim leader Sunday, just hours after Aristide fled.

Philippe told The Associated Press he will arrest Prime Minister Yvon Neptune. He also said the rebel forces that took part in the uprising that sent Aristide into African exile would disarm.

It was calm again Tuesday in Port-au-Prince, reports CBS News Correspondent Mark Strassmann. A carnival of joy has replaced the air of menace in Haiti's capital and people were dancing right in front of the national palace because Aristide no longer lives there.

President Bush called President Jacques Chirac of France and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil to review developments in Haiti.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration sought to put aside the controversy over Aristide's departure from Haiti, expressing little interest in his claims that he was forced to go into exile by the American military.

"I think the story's been addressed," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said, referring to emphatic administration denials. "The decision to leave was Mr. Aristide's to make and it was a decision that was in the best interest of the Haitian people."

Aristide, currently in the Central African Republic, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Monday that he was "forced to leave" Haiti by U.S. military forces. He added that they would "start shooting and be killing" if he refused, but it was unclear if he was referring to rebels or U.S. agents.

Secretary of State Colin Powell called the allegations "absolutely baseless, absurd." U.S. officials acknowledged privately, however, that Aristide was told that if he remained in Haiti, U.S. forces would not protect him from the rebels who wanted to arrest him and put him on trial for corruption and murder.

Aristide left after 100 people died in a three-week rebellion that had reached the outskirts of the capital. It was the culmination of years of unrest after a flawed legislative election that Aristide's party won. The election dispute prompted the U.S. and other countries to block aid to impoverished Haiti.

Black lawmakers and others demanded an investigation into the way the administration treated Aristide in the hours before he left his country and turned up in the Central African Republic. They built their objections around repeated claims by Aristide that U.S. officials forced him out.

The day before Aristide fled, the United States blamed him for the crisis and strongly hinted he should go. The Miami Herald reports the U.S. blocked a private firm from sending additional bodyguards to protect Aristide.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., says the pressure put on Aristide to resign seemed to indicate that the Bush administration had sided with "the opposition and the coup people." He worried that further violence could erupt if Haitians believe the United States was behind Aristide's ouster.

The U.S. has a long history of intervention in Haiti. From 1915 to 1934, the U.S. military occupied Haiti to protect U.S. business interests. The New York Times reports that in the 1980s and early 1990s, the CIA had members of the Haitian military and political groups on its payroll; those groups were linked to death squads.

Philippe, a former provincial police chief during Aristide's tenure, has said he wants to reconstitute the army that ousted Aristide in 1991. Aristide disbanded the military in 1995, a year after he was returned to power by 20,000 U.S. troops.

Human Rights Watch has said Philippe has a "dubious human rights record," pointing to executions of gang members committed by a deputy while he was police chief of Port-au-Prince's Delmas section.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan refused to comment on the claims by Aristide. Instead, he said that stabilizing Haiti could take years and he urged the international community to make a long-term commitment to the violence-wracked Caribbean country.

"With the controversy continuing to brew about the circumstances surrounding Aristide's departure, the secretary-general tried to underscore the need for a longer term solution to Haiti's violence — and stay out of the fray about the transition" said CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst Pamela Falk.