Haiti Rebels Close On Capital

Rebels who have launched a bloody uprising took control of another town Friday, closing in on the capital as Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide appealed for foreign peacekeepers and the country lurched toward chaos.

The rebels drove police out and freed about 67 prisoners in Mireblais, about 40 kilometers southeast of Port-au-Prince, according to witnesses. It was unclear whether the rebels were still in the town or whether they were pushing toward the capital.

On Thursday, police abandoned Haiti's third-largest city, Les Cayes. The city was claimed by the Base Resistance, an anti-government group allied with Haiti's opposition Democratic Platform but not tied to the rebels. Shots were fired, but there was no gunbattle before the police fled.

Aristide supporters, meanwhile, gathered in front National Palace early Friday morning to protect Haiti's embattled leader. Teenagers driving bulldozers and forklifts built barricades of wrecked cars, telephone poles, chairs, garbage and burning tires.

"If Aristide goes, cut off their heads and burn down their houses!" Aristide loyalists shouted outside the National Palace, echoing the war cry of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the Haitian general who ousted French colonizers to end slavery 200 years ago.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell came close to telling Aristide he should bow out as president before his term expires in February 2006.

"Whether or not he is able to effectively continue as president is something he will have to examine carefully in the interests of the Haitian people," Powell told reporters.

In continuing diplomatic efforts, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin was holding talks Friday with leaders of Haiti's government on how to end a three-week rebellion that threatens to plunge the Caribbean nation into all-out chaos.

De Villepin, who has called on Haiti's President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to resign, also had planned to meet with Haiti's opposition members but they were unable to travel to Paris for logistical reasons, according to the French Foreign Ministry.

At the United Nations, an effort to formulate a plan for a peacekeeping force bogged down.

"Despite emotional pleas to stop the bloodshed, the U.N. Security Council failed to reach a consensus to authorize a multinational force until a political agreement is reached," said CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst Pamela Falk. "Meaning either all sides will feel intense pressure to find a middle ground or violence is certain to increase."

Haiti's rebellion erupted Feb. 5 in western Gonaives, the fourth-largest city, and on Sunday the second largest, the northern port of Cap-Haitien, was taken with little resistance.

Rebel leader Guy Philippe, speaking to an Associated Press reporter in Cap-Haitien, said his forces were already converging on Port-au-Prince and would attack if Aristide did not resign.

"We're just going to take our positions and wait for the right time (to attack)," said Philippe, a former officer in the disbanded army who was Aristide's assistant police chief for northern Haiti. "They're awaiting the order."

About 80 people, half of them police officers, have been killed in the popular rebellion, which was launched by a street gang in Gonaives that says it was armed by Aristide to terrorize opponents.

Aristide told CNN in a telephone interview that it wouldn't take much international aid to crush the insurgency, one of whose commanders is former death squad leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain.

"From my point of view, if we have a couple of dozen of international soldiers, police, together right now, it could be enough to send a positive signal to those terrorists," Aristide said. "Once they realize the international community refuses (to allow) the terrorists to keep killing people, we can prevent them to kill more people."

Jamaica's Foreign Minister K.D. Knight, speaking for the 15-nation Caribbean Community that includes Haiti, made an urgent appeal at an open meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Thursday for immediate assistance.

"The situation is one of utmost urgency," Knight said.

But Powell and his counterparts from France and Canada said Haiti's government and opposition politicians must reach a political agreement before any peacekeepers go.

Haiti's crisis has been brewing since Aristide's party swept flawed legislative elections in 2000 and international donors froze millions of dollars in aid.

Aristide agreed last week to a U.S.-backed peace plan in which he would share power with the political opposition — who say they are not linked to the rebels — but the opposition rejected the proposal Wednesday. Like the rebels, they say there can be no peace in Haiti unless Aristide resigns.

U.S. Congressman Robert Wexler, a Democratic from Florida, said the U.S. government's policy is "totally incoherent."

"Unfortunately ... most of the people creating the unrest in Haiti are not a part of the discussions that are currently going on, so it will be effectively impossible to reach a political conclusion that satisfies the administration's standard for American involvement," he told reporters in Washington.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, visiting Libya, urged the United States to protect Aristide.

"Unless something happens immediately, the president could be killed," Jackson said in Tripoli, Libya. "We must not allow that to happen to that democracy. We must give the best troops to Haiti to protect the president's compound."

Aristide reiterated Thursday his determination to remain president.

Many foreigners and Haitians fled the country Thursday.

American special agents with M-16s guarded a convoy of U.N. workers and their families on the way to Port-au-Prince's airport, passing street barricades made of wrecked cars, rocks and tires built by Aristide supporters to impede a rebel assault.

At some of the dozens of barricades set up Thursday people were being robbed.

Military helicopters of the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, ferried people from the Dominican Embassy to the airport, which was packed, mostly with Haitian-Americans trying to return to the United States.

Late Thursday, American Airlines canceled its flights between Haiti and the United States until March 3.

Businesses were shuttered, long lines formed at the few open banks and gas stations, and streets were mostly devoid of people.

Aristide, a former priest of Haiti's slums who in 1990 became Haiti's first freely elected leader, has lost popularity amid accusations he condoned corruption, failed to help the poor and had thugs attack and intimidate political opponents.

Haitians were fleeing their country in boats. The U.S. Coast Guard intercepted a dozen small boats carrying 546 Haitians near the Haitian coast this week, spokesman Luis Diaz said.

But "It doesn't appear to be a mass exodus," he added.