Security Council Orders Naval Cordon of Haiti : Caribbean: Nation’s military ruler remains defiant. Clinton triples Marine contingent at U.S. Embassy.

The confrontation between Haiti and the United Nations intensified Saturday as the country’s military ruler continued to defy U.N. demands that he step down, prompting the U.N. Security Council to order a naval cordon around the strife-torn nation.

Hours later, a concerned President Clinton, determined to ensure the safety of Americans here, announced that he had ordered 30 more Marines to the capital, Port-au-Prince, to help reinforce the guard unit at the U.S. Embassy, tripling the previous complement.

The Clinton Administration’s top national security advisers conferred briefly at the White House on Saturday, but officials said they made no new decisions on U.S. policy toward Haiti.

Aides said Clinton was receiving reports on the Haitian situation as it developed.

The quick and unanimous vote by the 15-member Security Council clears the way for six U.S. warships dispatched by the President on Friday to begin enforcing the U.N. embargo at 11:59 p.m. EDT Monday. It is designed to force Haitian army commander Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras to honor an agreement reached in July and step down in favor of elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Canada was also sending two destroyers and a supply ship to aid in the embargo enforcement.

The steps by the United Nations and the White House came amid continuing chaos in Port-au-Prince and conflicting signals from Haiti’s military leaders about their intentions.

Civilian gunmen stalked the streets as diplomats and other foreign nationals scrambled to leave the country before more violence erupted, and ordinary citizens rushed to refill their gas tanks before the embargo went into effect.

Anti-Aristide gangs have demanded that the city be shut down Monday and have called on Haitians to drive whites out of the country.

Cedras, in an appearance on Haitian television, insisted that the U.N.-brokered accord is still in effect and said he would step down, as he has promised, as soon as Parliament approves amnesty for him and his allies.

At the same time, the Haitian general was quoted as having said in a letter to U.N. mediator Dante Caputo that the plan for restoring democratic rule to the troubled island nation is “at a dead end.”

Later in the evening, he said in a statement that the United Nations had “overstepped its bounds” in ordering the sanctions.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Defense Department said the six-ship flotilla had arrived at its station in international waters just outside Haiti’s 12-mile limit and would begin routine patrols designed to demonstrate a show of force to would-be suppliers.

Officials said the vessels will be empowered to stop and search any merchant ships suspected of carrying oil, arms or military and police equipment, and do whatever is necessary to prevent them from carrying goods to Haiti.

Separately, the Pentagon said advance elements of a 450- to 600-troop Marine force that Clinton has dispatched to help evacuate about 1,100 Americans from Haiti, if necessary, began leaving Camp Lejeune, N.C., for a staging area at Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.

It wasn’t immediately clear what turns the Haitian situation might take next.

Although U.N. officials hinted that the Security Council might take further action if the naval quarantine fails to work, there was no immediate indication that the United States was prepared to take part in any military offensive to oust the country’s ruling junta.

Publicly, the White House continued to express hope that the Security Council action Saturday will prompt the Haitian military to change its mind about trying to block the return of Aristide.

“It’s a chaotic situation,” Mark D. Gearan, the White House communications director, told the Associated Press. “But we are hopeful that these steps will be appropriate to the circumstances.

But privately, senior Administration officials were pessimistic about the outlook and convinced that it will take full resumption of the embargo before the military junta will reconsider.

That view was largely shared by Aristide himself, who appeared Saturday on CNN’s “Both Sides With Jesse Jackson.”

Aristide said he believes that Cedras and Haiti’s chief of police, Col. Michel-Joseph Francois, must “be removed first” before democracy can be restored.

“The only thing we have to continue doing is moving the way we are moving, through this blockade, in order to have them out,” he said. “We have to continue putting pressure on them.”

Despite the continued chaos Saturday, there were tentative signs that the situation in Port-au-Prince may be easing a bit, if only temporarily.

An anti-foreign demonstration planned for Saturday night by the violent Front for Haitian Advancement and Progress was called off, and earlier radio broadcasts, which had called for Haitians to “fight whites,” appeared to have stopped.

Col. Jean Robert Gabriel, a member of the Haitian military high command, told Radio Metropole that the large number of soldiers in Port-au-Prince was intended “to reassure the population . . . and counter alarmist rumors.”

And newspapers published a letter from Cedras to Caputo expressing sadness at the failure of the U.N.-brokered peace agreement that the two sides signed July 3.

Police Chief Francois, considered the principal force behind the reign of terror, also issued soothing statements, even offering a reward for information concerning Thursday’s murder of pro-Aristide Justice Minister Guy Malary.

Sources who claim close contacts to Cedras and Francois suggested that the military is working to improve its image, even conducting a public relations campaign in the United States targeted mainly at conservative politicians.

Times staff writer Art Pine in Washington contributed to this report.