Haiti Selects New Leader; OAS Rebuffed : Coup: Soldiers firing shots circle the National Assembly as lawmakers vote. New elections may be held soon.

Acting under direct army pressure, the National Assembly voted Monday to replace deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and set the stage for new elections within 90 days.

With soldiers ringing the building and occasionally firing shots in the air, the lawmakers unanimously invoked an emergency provision of the Haitian constitution to declare the presidency vacant and chose Supreme Court Justice Joseph Nerette as interim head of state. It was not known whether he would accept.

“We are doing it now because the army wanted it done--they were in a hurry,” said one member of the Assembly who asked not to be identified.

Aristide--the 38-year-old priest who won Haiti’s first real election by a landslide vote last December--had flown from Washington to Venezuela, where he first found refuge from the coup.

The Assembly’s action was a sharp rebuff to the Organization of American States, which demanded that Aristide be restored to power immediately or Haiti would face economic and political quarantine by the other 33 member states. The decision to replace Aristide came as OAS foreign ministers prepared to meet on the Haitian coup today in Washington.

Haiti has been without a government for eight days. Under Article 149 of the constitution, the interim president may call elections from 45 to 90 days after his installation.

In another display of military muscle, a witness said that Port-au-Prince Mayor Evan Paul was roughed up by police and arrested at the airport as he prepared to leave on a Venezuelan plane to meet with Aristide. Army officials also prevented other civic and political leaders from taking the flight to see the deposed leader.

“We want a president today!” a group of soldiers shouted at the group.

Even while the lawmakers voted, an eight-nation OAS task force was meeting with Haitian military and political leaders on the week-old crisis.

The general hospital morgue reported that 85 people died of bullet wounds and 291 others were wounded in the turmoil after the coup. There were new reports, citing eyewitness accounts, that Haitian soldiers killed 40 residents in one slum area within 48 hours after the coup.

Diplomats believe that several hundred people were killed, including 11 soldiers. But it has been impossible to get confirmation of an overall death toll.

National Assembly members, who generally opposed Aristide’s return to power because of his arbitrary rule since taking office in February, indicated Sunday that they were prepared to take the same course without military pressure.

Although the acting president’s post went to Nerette, the senior judge of the Supreme Court, all indications were that the real power would lie with leaders of the military coup that deposed Aristide a week ago.

A new military figure emerged Monday as a possible behind-the-scenes power in the coup against Aristide: Maj. Michel Francois, chief of police in Port-au-Prince and commander of a key army unit in control of the downtown area.

Soldiers under Francois’ leadership surrounded the National Assembly building and fired shots into the air in a grim reminder of their presence.

Francois, 34, a slightly built officer of average height, is regarded as a hard-line law-and-order man in the Haitian military. He is said to be popular with enlisted men and often gave a clenched-fist salute to his troops, which they returned.

When the Assembly completed its vote, an envelope apparently containing the official documents was carried out of the building by a member of the House of Deputies.

“Maj. Francois, here it is,” the deputy said as he turned over the envelope. It was then handed to a driver who left immediately for an unknown destination.

Francois and some of his soldiers exchanged hand-slapping congratulations on the outcome.

Those with inside knowledge of the Haitian army said that Francois had clashed repeatedly with Aristide’s top advisers over police business and felt that he was a marked man.

Troops of his 4th Company led the Sept. 30 coup, according to diplomats on the scene, and were joined by other units.

The head of the army junta, Gen. Raoul Cedras, was said to have little choice but to become the symbolic leader of the coup, diplomats said. If he refused to do so, he would have been replaced by lower-ranking officers and enlisted men who were the driving force that deposed Aristide, they added.

The army has declared Aristide’s return unacceptable, despite the OAS stand, picturing him as an incipient dictator like the hated Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier, whose family ruled Haiti for 30 years.

Army officers strongly resented Aristide’s creation of a special security detachment under his personal control, which they saw as the start of a rival armed force. The president also antagonized the army by making special payments to some soldiers and deciding on transfers and promotions outside of military channels.

They also asserted--with backing from political and business leaders--that Aristide condoned or encouraged mob violence against his opponents, particularly murder by burning.

Even American officials, who backed Aristide after his election victory, began hedging their support in recent days and accusing him of human rights abuses.

The fast-moving developments came as this capital city gradually edged back to normal after a week of shuttered stores and lack of public transport.

Commercial air service resumed at the airport for the first time in a week, banks and food stores began to open and sidewalk vendors were doing a brisk business.

Colorfully painted jitney buses known as tap taps began cruising the streets again. Taxis also were back in business. By nightfall, however, sporadic gunfire was heard in the downtown area.

In Washington, the Bush Administration, expressing concern about Aristide’s human rights record, sought to distance itself from him. White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater and State Department spokesman Richard Boucher reaffirmed U.S. support for an OAS resolution that demands Aristide’s return to power but refused to provide a “yes” or “no” answer to repeated questions about whether the United States would accept any compromise.

“Our support is the same as it’s always been, which is for the democratic rule in the country,” Fitzwater said. “The electoral process produced Mr. Aristide . . . and (he) holds the most hope for . . . restoring democracy, and it is that rule of democracy that we support.”

A U.S. official said the Administration was concerned by reports that Aristide seemed to endorse the “necklace” murder of political opponents and had acquiesced in other human rights violations before he was deposed last week.

The official said the Administration has decided to avoid language that might imply “a wholehearted endorsement of everything he’s done since he took office.”

Times staff writers Douglas Jehl and Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.