Demonstrators in Haiti Stone Tipper Gore’s Motorcade

Demonstrators stoned Tipper Gore’s motorcade as it arrived at a health center in a Haitian slum Sunday, but officials said her vehicle was not hit.

Eyewitnesses said demonstrators broke the windows of two vehicles in the motorcade. A U.S. Army major was cut in the head.

A U.S. official in Haiti said the demonstration by slum dwellers in Cite Soleil was against the director of the U.S.-funded health center. It was not planned and Mrs. Gore was not in danger, the official said.

Mrs. Gore accompanied her husband, Vice President Al Gore, to Haiti, where Gore spent the morning with Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide at the Presidential Palace several miles away.

The vice president’s one-day visit was to celebrate Aristide’s return to power one year ago with the help of the United States. A 1991 coup had forced him out of Haiti.

“It was a minor incident,” the vice president’s press secretary, Peggy Wilhide, said of the assault on the motorcade. She said the stones were thrown at a car carrying several of Mrs. Gore’s staff, including her personal assistant, her press secretary and a doctor.

“There was staff in the car, but everyone is fine,” Wilhide said. She described the incident as a labor dispute and said that the motorcade got caught in the middle.

Aid workers said slum dwellers believe that too little of the U.S. aid given to the health center trickles down to the community and that money is siphoned off by project administrators.

A demonstration outside the health center turned violent before Mrs. Gore arrived, and U.N. peacekeepers used tear gas to repel three protesters who got inside the center compound.

The crowd responded by throwing stones at the U.N. troops.

One hour later, two military Humvees advancing ahead of Mrs. Gore’s motorcade drove into the crowd, and a demonstrator was hurt. Protesters began shouting anti-American slogans such as “Go home, Yankee” and “Go home, U.N.” in Creole.

The crowd then stoned the passing vehicles, cracking the windshield of one of them and smashing the windows of another.