Haiti tense as aid agencies warn of crisis
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Fri Feb 13,10:24 PM ET
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GONAIVES, Haiti (AFP) - Rebels clung to control of Haiti's fourth-largest city as the Red Cross and United Nations (news - web sites) warned that chaos imperiled hospitals and cut food deliveries.
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Slideshow: Haiti Uprising
Rebels seeking to oust President Jean Bertrand Aristide took the northern city of Gonaives on February 5 and continued to other towns, insisting they could fight off any police attempt to retake the city. About 50 people have been killed since the troubles started. Aristide's political opponents disowned the armed groups. "Any police operation will be pushed back because we have the means, the desire and the conviction to do so," Winter Etienne, a leader of the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front told AFP. Etienne said the rebels could "free" more cities, including the second city of Cap Haitien. If US troops try to help Aristide, he warned, "we would take down the Haitian flag here and raise the Cuban flag." Another rebel leader, Butteur Metayer, called for insurrection nationwide and warned "we will not wait until the end of February to march into Port-au-Prince to topple Aristide." He claimed rebels hold several towns in Artibonite department including Anse Rouge and Marchand-Desslines. There was no independent confirmation. In the capital Port-au-Prince, Prime Minister Yvon Neptune told a press conference the Haitian people were "a non-violent people, not at all interested in civil war." The violence sweeping Haiti, he said, was the work of "people interested in arms and drug trafficking who want to control the country." Claims that armed gangs were linked to the government were "lies," he said. "These gangs have nothing to do with President Jean Bertrand Aristide, but with drug and arms trafficking, because they have weapons that the police, and even the president's security detail, do not have." Neptune said the government "had control of the country for the moment," although police in Gonaive "had to beat a tactical retreat to avoid a blood bath in the population. "With the help of the people we expect to reverse the situation," said the premier. In Washington, US Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said after meeting with Canadian counterpart Bill Graham and a representative of the 15-nation Caribbean community, Caricom, that the forcible removal of Aristide was not acceptable. "We will accept no outcome that in any way illegally removes the elected president of Haiti," he said, but added, "What we need from Aristide now is action and not only words and expressions of support." Powell flatly excluded any US intention to intervene militarily in Haiti.
"There is no plan, and we (have) discussed no plan here, for military or other kinds of intervention," he said. In 1994, President Bill Clinton (news - web sites) sent 20,000 troops to return Aristide to power after he was ousted in a coup. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said medical facilities were grinding to a halt as staff feared for their safety and victims of violence were afraid to visit hospitals. "The ICRC is particularly concerned about repeated cases of armed persons entering medical facilities," the agency said in a statement. "These incursions are posing a growing threat to medical staff and patients alike." UN aid agencies on Friday appealed for swift access to Gonaives, Cap Haitien and other northern towns that food convoys cannot reach because of the violence. "What humanitarian workers need now is access to the north," said Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the UN humanitarian coordinator in Geneva. An aid flight arrived in Cap Haitien on Thursday, allowing 300 Cuban doctors in the region to keep working, she added. Byrs warned that a fuel shortage affected power supplies to hospitals and hampered supplies of drinking water. In Brussels, the European Commission (news - web sites) expressed concern about the violence and said it was evaluating the need to send aid. "We are following the developments with great care," said Diego de Ojeda, foreign affairs spokesman for the European Union (news - web sites)'s executive body. "Clearly, the situation is very worrying."
"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the state."
- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
