U.N. Orders Staff to Pull Out of Haiti as Tensions Mount : Caribbean: More than 200 are told to evacuate after coup leader refuses to step down. Armed gangs roam capital’s streets. Envoy denies nation is being abandoned.

The United Nations ordered nearly all of its personnel out of Haiti on Friday, after it became clear that army commander Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras was refusing to resign as promised and tensions grew in the chaotic capital.

Concern that groups of gunmen organized by the military and police would resume the murderous violence that has marked life here in recent days triggered the evacuation, which involved about 260 U.N. officials and human rights observers.

A group of 130 people left for the neighboring Dominican Republic on Friday night, with a similar number scheduled to evacuate today. Fewer than 40 U.N. personnel will remain behind, officials said.

U.N. special envoy Dante Caputo denied that the U.N. move amounted to an abandonment of the human rights mission but said a temporary evacuation is necessary “because of the lack of security.”

Because of the security situation and their controversial work here, the observers, mostly young Americans and Latin Americans, were seen as particularly vulnerable to the military-controlled gangs that roam the streets of Port-au-Prince. The gangs are blamed for the Thursday slaying of Justice Minister Guy Malary and the hundreds of other assassinations carried out since July.

Earlier Friday, a U.N.-chartered aircraft flew out 51 dependents of international aid and development agencies, and Caputo ordered the 150 human rights observers staffing 13 field offices throughout the country into the capital after radio communications were cut off, presumably by the military.

During the day, U.N. employees were busy shredding documents “and scrubbing desks,” as one put it. Many could be seen weeping as they prepared to leave, some out of concern less for their own safety than for that of the people they were leaving.

Cedras, who had pledged to resign by Friday as part of a pact to allow elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to return from exile and resume office, let night fall Friday without resigning.

The agreement setting out conditions for the return of the president, ousted in a September, 1991, coup, was negotiated and signed July 3 on Governors Island in New York Harbor.

Cedras faces a renewal of tough U.N. sanctions Monday. To help enforce those sanctions, President Clinton ordered six U.S. warships to Haitian waters on Friday.

The Haitian strongman issued a letter demanding a public debate with Caputo and insisted that rather than reneging on the agreement, he was only seeking clarifications of what he said were violations of the accord by the United Nations and Aristide. He also scheduled several television interviews with American networks to defend his refusal to abide by his July 3 promises.

Military sources said Cedras was staying in office because of pressure from the military. Observers here noted that the military’s hold on power, not a relatively symbolic resignation, is the real issue.

There were no signs Friday that the military was prepared to relinquish power. The armed bands of uniformed police, soldiers and gunmen dressed in civilian clothes that prowled the streets of the capital were armed with old but powerful automatic rifles. Anti-Aristide groups, urging Haitians to defy the Clinton Administration’s efforts to force the return of democracy, called for all white foreigners to leave the country.

Several diplomats said they were extremely concerned about what would happen after darkness fell in the capital’s slums and the countryside.

“You know what will happen,” one diplomat said. “The chefs de section (military-appointed civilian sheriffs) will get drunk on rum and start beating . . . anyone they want.”

This anticipation and Cedras’ defiance heightened the sense of foreboding enveloping the island nation. A city already effectively shut down by threats from the military’s thugs assumed the appearance of an abandoned movie set by afternoon, when Clinton’s announcement ordering the warships toward Haiti became known.

“Don’t go downtown,” one American journalist was told when he stopped to buy gasoline. “The only ones there are attaches and Macoutes,” a reference to the plainclothes groups whose violence Monday prevented the landing of U.S. and Canadian military advisers and threatened the ranking American diplomat here.

The haze of fear thickened a few hours later when a group of anti-Aristide die-hards took over the state-owned national radio and urged attacks on white journalists beginning Monday, when U.N. sanctions are to take effect.

Some experts say that even a Cedras resignation would not end the crisis because the real power behind the attaches, Port-au-Prince Police Chief Col. Michel-Joseph Francois, remains determined to prevent Aristide’s return, no matter the cost.

“I am a Haitian and I have chosen to stay and die in Haiti,” Francois has repeatedly stated this week, answering demands that he accept reassignment outside the country.

A last-minute effort by the United States to persuade Cedras that he must step down as he agreed had no effect.

Retired U.S. diplomat Lawrence E. Pezzullo, President Clinton’s representative here, and Lt. Gen. John J. Sheehan, the director of operations for the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, met briefly with the army chief about the time that Clinton announced the naval action.

U.S. Ambassador William Swing arrived in Haiti on Friday, filling a post left vacant for 15 months. He expressed optimism that a democratic government under Aristide can still be restored peacefully.

But the evacuation of the human rights observers raised grave concern among international officials about the fate of Haitians who had worked for the mission and people who had complained about military and police abuses.

“We are deserting Haiti and the people,” one official said. “We have let 200 crazy killers decide what the world will do.”

“By leaving like this,” one observer said, “we have done more damage than if we had never come. We created targets. I don’t care how many destroyers are out there. They won’t help the people here. Who’s going to evacuate them?”