U.S. Troops Move to Disarm Haiti’s Main Military Base : Occupation: American officials, pro-democracy leaders meet in bid to set up new government. Clarified rules permit force to halt violence against civilians.

As U.S. Special Forces troops occupied Haiti’s only major military complex Thursday with the cooperation of Haitian soldiers, American officials began meeting with local pro-democracy leaders in an effort to swiftly re-establish an alternative government to the dictatorship that the Americans came to evict.

And while U.S. soldiers expanded their contact with the Haitian people, American military leaders sought to clarify the rules of engagement, stressing that U.S. troops will now be allowed to use force to stop attacks by the Haitian army and police against local civilians.

U.S. officials said soldiers are being told to use their “best judgment” about when to use force, and stressed that the decision on whether to intervene is still up to commanders on the scene.

The rules of engagement became a source of controversy in the opening days of the Haiti operation after at least one Haitian was killed by local police near the port of the capital, Port-au-Prince, as U.S. troops guarding the installation looked on.

But Thursday, American soldiers received Haitian help as they began disarming Camp D’Application, known as Heavy Weapons Company. The site is Haiti’s only major military complex, which includes its military academy, just outside Port-au-Prince. Throughout the day, the troops confiscated machine guns, mortars, small missiles and ammunition belts, while Bradley fighting vehicles were brought in to tow away larger artillery, armored vehicles and gun systems.

Haitian soldiers traveled side by side with Americans in trucks carrying away the munitions. Gen. Richard Potter, commander of the special forces, said his troops had occupied the complex without incident Wednesday afternoon, after meetings between U.S. and Haitian military leaders.

Potter said the Haitian troops have been cooperative, adding: “But they don’t have any choice, do they?”

Meanwhile, U.S. officials said that Gen. David Meade, commander of the Army forces in Haiti, and U.S. Ambassador William L. Swing met with Haitian labor, business and civic leaders Thursday in an effort to explain the U.S. role here and speed the process of re-establishing democracy--even though exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has not fully endorsed the agreement struck between the Clinton Administration and the Haitian rulers to restore him to power.

U.S. officials said they expect the democratically elected Aristide to return to Haiti by Oct. 15, the deadline by which army commander Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras has agreed to give up power. In the meantime, they said they hope to begin reinstalling democratically elected officials--many of whom are in hiding or in exile--before Aristide’s return.

For example, U.S. Embassy spokesman Stanley Shrager said that the Americans hope to help Port-au-Prince’s elected mayor, Evans Paul, return from hiding and resume his post as mayor of the city.

Shrager added that as U.S. troops begin to move beyond Port-au-Prince into other towns and villages, pro-democracy leaders who have been in hiding will be reinstalled in those places as well.

And officials said the United States is also working to reassemble Haiti’s Parliament as quickly as possible so it can vote on an amnesty agreement--part of the accord negotiated last weekend--that members of the military regime demanded before they will leave power.

The government of provisional President Emile Jonassaint said in a statement Thursday that it will formally ask Parliament to go into special session to pass the amnesty for crimes committed by the military and its supporters since the September, 1991, coup that overthrew Aristide. The Jonassaint government also said it will soon announce a timetable for the election of more than 2,000 new senators, deputies, mayors and other officials.

Among other serious concerns of American officials here has been the political impact of the beating incidents earlier this week.

In a press briefing Thursday afternoon, Col. John Altenburg, the U.S. Army’s chief lawyer for the Haiti operation, said that the confusion over the issue of intervention came because of the last-minute change in the nature of the Haiti operation, from invasion to peaceful entry into the country. The Pentagon had prepared two sets of rules of engagement--one for an invasion and a second in case the military dictatorship fled before a U.S. arrival.

Altenburg said the Army had not really planned for a peaceful entry while the military dictators were still in place. At the same time, U.S. commanders wanted to get their forces organized and established before getting involved in local affairs.

Additionally, U.S. commanders agreed after U.S. troops landed Monday to give Cedras time to curb his forces’ activities. Altenburg said Thursday that U.S. officers believed that they owed Cedras the chance to take care of the situation himself.

But by Thursday, it was clear that U.S. patience with Cedras and the Haitian military and police had run out. Officials said that Col. Michael Sullivan, commander of the U.S. Army’s 16th Military Police Brigade, met with Michel-Joseph Francois, the Port-au-Prince police chief and a key member of the military regime, to tell him that U.S. forces will now forcibly stop any attacks on the Haitian people by other Haitians.

“They now are able to use force against the Haitian police,” Altenburg said.

Still, many U.S. soldiers, including a 1,000-member unit of military police newly arrived in Haiti, said Thursday that they had not yet been told of the new guidelines and were still under specific orders not to interfere.

“As it stands now, we’re not supposed to intervene,” said Sgt. Gorney Claywell of the 16th Military Police Brigade.

“We haven’t heard anything different,” said Pvt. Shane Nye of the MP brigade.

Despite the continued presence in the country of the military dictators, the reality of the overwhelming force that the United States has brought in--including more than 9,000 soldiers--has clearly begun to sink in with the Haitian rulers. By Thursday, local armed personnel were no longer much in evidence on the streets.

The most striking example of the U.S. dominance was the scene at the Heavy Weapons Company, where as Potter spoke, an AC-130 gunship circled overhead. Its task would have been to devastate Camp D’Application with machine-gun and cannon fire if the invasion had taken place.

Potter, a gruff, old-school Army officer in the Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf mold, dismissed Haiti’s military equipment as 15 to 20 years out of date and said that only half of it, at most, was operational. He added that he had been given a complete inventory of Haitian weaponry from U.S. intelligence sources, and that “according to U.S. intelligence, I’ve got it all.”

The camp’s soccer field, where the Americans gathered all of the Haitian army’s major weapons and vehicles, was to have been a landing site for soldiers flown in from the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba.

The troops, many of whom were selected because they speak French or Creole, said they were rapidly building an easy rapport with the Haitian troops who were helping them confiscate their country’s weapons. While Haitian officers watched silently, refusing to talk to reporters, Haitian enlisted men cooperated so much that they even pointed out weapons that U.S. troops had missed in their initial search.

“Last night, after we got here, we stayed up talking to some of them until 2 in the morning, just getting to know each other,” said Sgt. Rhette Watts of the 3rd Special Forces unit, as he watched Haitian soldiers load munitions into a truck for the American military. “They are just as curious about us as we are about them.”