U.S. Tells Haiti Rebels To Disarm

Ruling out a government role for rebel leaders in Haiti, the Bush administration is insisting they lay down their arms and get off the streets of the ravaged Caribbean country.

Meanwhile, rebels began patrolling the streets of the capital as rebel leader Guy Philippe declared himself the new chief of Haiti's military and threatened to arrest the country's prime minister.

"The country is in my hands!" Philippe announced Tuesday on the radio in between touring the city in the back of a pickup truck and greeting throngs of admiring Haitians.

But as more U.S. Marines poured into the country, the State Department said Tuesday that an orderly, constitutional process is under way to form a new government to succeed ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Rejecting Philippe's declaration, Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega said, "He is not in control of anything but a ragtag band of people."

Faced with an international buildup in the troubled Caribbean country, Philippe "will probably want to make himself scarce," Noriega told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

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

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

Philippe, meanwhile, appeared on the second-floor balcony of the colonnaded former army headquarters and raised a fist as hundreds of onlookers wildly cheered.

Philippe said he was ready to follow the orders of interim President Boniface Alexandre, the chief justice of the Supreme Court who was installed Sunday. Denying he was interested in politics, Philippe pledged rebel forces would disarm.

But 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.

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

The State Department on Tuesday affirmed a U.S. commitment to a constitutional process to form a new government.

Ambassador James Foley was in touch with members of Aristide's government and the opposition, trying to set up a "council of eminent persons" to name a prime minister and a new government, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

"All illegal and armed groups should lay down their arms," Boucher said. "The rebels need to disband and go back to their homes."

Left unclear was how the rebels would be disarmed if they did not voluntarily cast aside their weapons.

The U.S. and French troops in Haiti have no orders to disarm Haiti's factions and instead are to secure key sites and protect their countries' citizens and government property, said Berger and the commander of the French forces.

"We are not a police force," said Berger.

There were 300 Marines in Haiti by midday Tuesday, and the number was expected to rise quickly to 500. Ultimately, 1,500 to 2,000 U.S. troops will be in Haiti as part of an international force, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said.

France, Haiti's former colonial occupier, has sent in 140 troops. Chile said it would send 120 special forces on Wednesday.

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.

Opponents accused Aristide of breaking promises to help the poor and masterminding attacks on opponents by armed gangs — charges he denied.

The U.S. and other countries had blocked international loans to Haiti since a 2000 legislative election in which a controversial vote-counting formula was used to award several seats to Aristide supporters.

The day before Aristide departed, the United States blamed the uprising on him and strongly suggested he should leave.

Top administration officials said they had no second thoughts about the U.S. role in Aristide's departure from the country that had elected him president in 2000.

"I am happy he is gone," Vice President Dick Cheney said on CNN. "I think the Haitian people are better off for it."

Cheney told Fox News Channel that Aristide chose to leave and resigned his presidency of his own free will. "This was his decision to go," the vice president said.

But Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, said he thought there ought to be some investigation of claims that Aristide was forced out.

American civil rights activist Jesse Jackson said Philippe had been a U.S. ally in preparing for Aristide's ouster and it was ironic to oppose him now.

Jackson, in an Associated Press interview, said Aristide and his wife, Mildred, had a right to asylum in the United States, where they have relatives.

"Anybody … fleeing for their lives has a right to come here," Jackson said.

In Port-au-Prince, execution-style killings continued. At least two more bodies showed up Tuesday on streets still littered with charred barricades set up by militant Aristide supporters who had rampaged and, along with many ordinary poor people, had gone on a looting spree before he fled.

"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."

By Wednesday, no permanent home had yet been found for Aristide, and the ex-leader was staying in the presidential palace in the Central African Republic, the African country's foreign minister, Charles Wenezoui said.

A diplomatic source in Washington, asking not to be identified, said Tuesday that Aristide had wanted to go to either Morocco or South Africa as an exile destination but both said no.