Rebels Close In On Aristide Allies

Haiti's government rebuffed proposals that President Jean-Bertrand Aristide step down to end a bloody uprising, while rebels threatened the Caribbean nation's second-largest city.

Aristide's militant defenders, meanwhile, vowed to take a stand against the two-week-old rebellion that has killed some 60 people and has attracted leaders with murderous backgrounds.

"We have machetes and guns, and we will resist," said carpenter Pierre Frandley. "The police might have been scared, but the people got together and organized. ... We blocked the streets."

Police took refuge in their stations, making clear they were too scared to patrol the streets of Cap-Haitien amid fears that rebels already have infiltrated the northern port and more were headed that way.

The rebels have chased police from more than a dozen towns and cut supply lines to northern Haiti from Port-au-Prince, the capital to the south, and from the western Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

U.S. officials worry the current crisis would only worsen if Aristide is forced to flee. One option being internally discussed is a transfer of power, with Aristide's consent, to a temporary governing board made up of Haitians who would run the country until a new president was elected. It is not clear how much support that proposal has at top levels of U.S. President George W. Bush's administration.

Aristide rebuffed Bush administration suggestions that he convene early presidential elections as a way to defuse the crisis, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday.

Although the U.S. administration has said it is opposed to any Haitian opposition attempt to drive Aristide from office, Bush officials are privately discussing ideas for a possible constitutional succession before Aristide's term expires in February 2006.

The U.S. has a long history of intervention in Haitian affairs, the last time being 1994 when 20,000 troops were sent in to restore Aristide to power after he was ousted in a coup. But Aristide has failed to deliver on promised reforms, says CBS News State Department Reporter Charles Wolfson.

Government spokesman Mario Dupuy said in Port-au-Prince, the capital, that Haiti could not accept any proposal involving a change in the election date or an early handoff of power.

"I can neither confirm nor deny that any such offer was made, formally or informally," he told The Associated Press. "But both proposals are unacceptable. They are tantamount to admitting the legitimacy of a coup d'etat against the government."

The crisis has been brewing since Aristide's party swept flawed legislative elections in 2000. Donors froze millions in international aid, leaving Aristide no means to keep election promises to make a better life for Haiti's 8 million people, half of whom go hungry daily.

Since then, Aristide has lost support amid charges he uses police and militants to terrorize opponents and allows corruption fueled by drug-trafficking to go unchecked.

As Haiti's beleaguered government pleaded in vain for international help, former soldiers ousted in a 1994 U.S. military intervention crossed from the Dominican Republic to join the rebellion.

"The army is no longer demobilized. The army is mobilized," said Jean-Baptiste Joseph, a former army sergeant who had headed a group of demobilized soldiers before being jailed in the 1990s for plotting insurrection.

He spoke in Hinche, a town of 50,000 at a strategic crossroads in Haiti's agriculture-rich Artibonite district, which was seized Monday by some 50 rebels led by a former death squad leader.

Radio stations also reported Wednesday that police have deserted their posts in four towns, and Dominican soldiers said they arrested four fleeing Haitian police along the sparsely guarded border.

Amnesty International warned "the specter of past violations continues to haunt Haiti" and that the newly emerged rebel leaders have "a horrific track record when it comes to human rights."

Their arrival means "fears of a mass population outflow from Haiti are bound to increase," the human rights organization warned, recalling the tens of thousands of Haitian boatpeople who fled to U.S. shores to escape the 1991-1994 military dictatorship.

One sign that a refugee crisis may be imminent would be a large-scale construction of boats. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said there are no signs of such activity, but the administration wants to "make sure that we're prepared should something happen."

The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday threw its weight behind Caribbean and Latin American efforts to find a peaceful political solution but said there was no discussion about sending U.N. peacekeepers.

Only France, Haiti's former colonizer, has said it is considering whether there is support for an intervention force.

Aristide, a once-beloved former priest who won Haiti's first free elections in a landslide in 1990, was ousted by the military eight months later. He was restored to popular acclaim when the United States sent 20,000 troops to Haiti in 1994.