Haiti Capital Patrols Are Beefed Up : Caribbean: Americans detain a Cedras confidant, but arms raids produce little. As Port-au-Prince calms down after four days of violence, a tougher U.S. position is signaled.

Thousands of U.S. troops were deployed in beefed-up patrols of Port-au-Prince on Sunday, detaining a top aide of Haitian military leader Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras during a weapons search and saturating urban neighborhoods where four days of looting and state-sponsored violence had left the capital exhausted but peaceful.

The intensified patrols and the detention of Romeo Halloun, a Cedras confidant and bodyguard, during one of several mostly unproductive weapons raids throughout the capital were symbolic but strong signals that U.S. commanders are getting tougher in their increasingly controversial mission to restore security and democracy to Haiti.

“Attention! Attention! Haitian people! Stop looting! Stop looting!” blared U.S. Army special-operations sound trucks that cruised throughout the day in the port district, where several privately owned warehouses had been cleaned out in previous days both before and after U.S. military police tried to stop the looting.

Army MP patrols also maintained a constant presence on the streets surrounding the headquarters of an armed Haitian military front group. It was the first show of force there since more than a dozen front members savagely attacked pro-democracy demonstrators throughout the day Friday without U.S. military intervention.

But there was no sign that the U.S. forces or the Haitian military had disarmed and neutralized the civilian attaches known under the banner FRAPH, who lazed the day away playing dominoes and cards on the front porch of their headquarters.

Most of the searches for arms caches in the capital Sunday netted little more than a single shotgun or pistol. The only report of a significant seizure was near the northern city of Cap Haitien in the border town of Quanaminthe, where military sources said about 1,000 weapons were recovered late Saturday night.

Halloun’s arrest came during a raid that was otherwise typical of Sunday’s weapons searches in the capital. It occurred while MPs with dog teams were raiding a tomato-paste factory that intelligence sources had said was part-owned by Halloun, who reportedly was among the founders of a tough, elite attache group known as the Ninjas.

The MPs stopped and searched Halloun and his car when he tried to enter the factory, witnesses said, confiscating a shotgun and a few handguns and detaining five people, including Halloun.

But the witnesses said more weapons were found in Halloun’s car than in the factory.

Cedras’ army, which U.S. commanders have instructed to recover all the weapons it issued to its civilian allies, did make a small gesture toward disarmament Sunday, announcing that it has revoked as of today all the more than 75,000 gun permits issued by the military regime. Gun owners will have to bring in their firearms for reissue or confiscation.

But after four days of violence that left at least 13 people dead and more than 100 wounded, the Haitian military and its government took no active steps to disarm its civilian allies.

Haitians in the capital did awake to some hopeful sights and sounds.

Ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s voice was broadcast on state radio for the first time since the coup that overthrew him three years ago. The radio station was seized and secured by the 4th Platoon of the 118th Military Police Company (Airborne) early Friday.

Aristide appealed to Haiti’s impoverished masses, the bedrock of his popular support, to stop looting and to patiently await his imminent return in peace.

“People get hurt when there is plundering,” the Roman Catholic priest said in a message apparently recorded from exile. “It is trouble that begets trouble.”

Following Aristide’s appeal, the U.S. armed forces broadcast a message in Creole in an effort to clarify the presence of more than 20,000 U.S. troops amid continuing violence and lawlessness that have led many Haitians to question the motives of the American mission.

“We are here to speed up the transition to peace,” the U.S. military broadcast declared. “We are not here as an occupation force. We’re not here to impose a government that you do not want.”

Throughout the city, Haitians huddled around radios tuned to the station for the first time in years.

Prices were also plummeting, with gasoline selling for a third of its astronomical official price of $16 a gallon as street merchants attempted to sell off stockpiles before the U.N. embargo of Haiti ends with Aristide’s return.

Even Port-au-Prince’s elite, many of whom have confined themselves to their enclaves in hillside Petionville, awoke Sunday to the sight of U.S. patrols, which were extended to Petionville and even ritzy Kenscoff Mountain and its weekend resorts 8,000 feet above the sea.

But there were other scenes that have become all too familiar during the past three years of brutal military rule.

At first light, residents near the port found two bodies savagely hacked to bits with machetes. Witnesses said they were would-be robbers who were attacked by security guards when they attempted an early morning break-in at a nearby store.

With such brutal reminders of the difficulty still ahead for the U.S. mission to restore Haiti’s stability and its brief democracy, popular skepticism endured. But it was accompanied by an apparent reservoir of continuing, if tenuous, goodwill.

“Sure, I feel safer to see these new American patrols around here,” said a 58-year-old man who lives in a house where Friday’s carnage left blood running in the street. “But how long are they going to be here doing this?”

Standing near the shattered and twisted remains of the sound truck that led Friday’s pro-democracy march, the man refused to give his name, an illustration of the continuing fear. And he said he feared negative public opinion in America toward the Haiti mission almost as much as the armed attaches roaming freely just around the corner.

“Of course we’re still afraid, because the country is still dangerous,” he said. “And if the Americans leave now, it will be even more terrible than it was. The army is watching which people are helping them, listening to those who speak out against them. If the Americans pull out before they get rid of all these people, they’ll come and kill everyone who took a stand.”

The U.S. soldiers on patrol and guarding the newly seized government institutions also reacted to the torrent of criticism of the mission back home.

Standing near the barbed wire now sealing off the national radio station, Sgt. Ron Underwood appeared flabbergasted at the lack of popular support in the United States for his work. He was in the platoon commanded by 1st Lt. Gail Yoshitani, who led the operation that secured the station at 4 a.m. Friday. Ever since, he said, he had been amazed by the Haitian reaction.

“We were up on the roof yesterday, and we saw a guy through our binoculars about two blocks away looking at us through binoculars,” the sergeant said. “He would look at us, go write some letters on the wall behind him and then look at us through the binoculars again to make sure we were still watching.

“When he finished the message in English, it read: ‘I love the U.S. Army. What is your name?’ ”

For the 4th Platoon, the support was perhaps more meaningful than that of the other units deployed in the streets. Although the members of the platoon secured the station without a single shot, three hours later a sniper opened fire on them with a small-caliber pistol--the first such fire directed toward the troops since they arrived in Port-au-Prince.

About 20 rounds were fired in all during a two-hour period, Underwood said, adding: “Fortunately, he was a terrible shot.”