Americans Heed Call to Leave Haiti

Scores of Americans, including missionaries and aid workers, streamed out of Haiti on Friday to escape a two-week rebellion that had overwhelmed the impoverished country’s north. Many police deserted their posts, and rebels threatened attacks this weekend.

Later in the day, American and other diplomats handed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide a plan that called for an interim governing council to advise him and for the appointment of a prime minister agreeable to both sides.

But both sides are almost certain to reject it -- Aristide because he has said he will not negotiate with the opposition, and the rival leaders because they want Aristide to step down.

Pro-government militants burned 15 homes in the western port of St. Marc overnight, and three people died in the fires, independent Radio Galaxie reported.

A day after the U.S. government urged Americans to leave Haiti, more than 200 people from the United States, France and Canada stood in long lines Friday at Toussaint L’Ouverture International Airport, anxious to get out.

“We knew that it was right for us to leave. It’s just hard,” said Nancy McWilliams, an 18-year-old from Ottawa who abandoned a volunteer job at a children’s home in the northern city of Cap Haitien.

The uprising began two weeks ago when rebels took the city of Gonaives, and they have since pushed police out of more than a dozen towns in the north. They accuse Aristide of breaking promises to help the poor and of driving the country into chaos while quietly supporting attacks on opponents -- charges the president denies.

Caribbean nations appealed to the international community to provide security assistance to end the rebellion.

U.S. Ambassador James Foley met Aristide and told him to accept a plan, backed by the United States, Canada, France and other nations, to install a new prime minister who could choose Cabinet members as a way of ending the impasse.

The United States made its demand as part of intensified mediation to search for a political settlement that it hoped would calm the spiraling violence and avert a need to send in U.S. troops to restore order, as it did a decade ago.

The diplomatic effort is limited to bringing together Aristide and the political opposition, rather than the armed gangs, joined by former soldiers and a death squad leader, who booted police out of several towns and villages in the northwest and center of the country.

But the military commander of the rebels, who have declared an “independent” country in Gonaives, the central town of Hinche and other areas they control, said they were prepared to take part in a peace process if it met their demands for Aristide to step down.

“We have never ruled out a peaceful solution,” said Guy Philippe, a former police chief of Cap Haitien, whom Aristide once accused of fomenting a coup and who came back from exile in the Dominican Republic to join the armed revolt.

“If they reach a good deal, we are prepared to collaborate,” Philippe said in Gonaives, dressed in military fatigues and surrounded by former soldiers from Haiti’s disbanded military.

Overtaking towns by forcing poorly trained and frightened police to flee, the rebels have presented no agenda other than giving themselves titles and saying they aim to take control of the rest of the country and topple Aristide.

The Pentagon said a U.S. military team had arrived to conduct a security assessment for the U.S. Embassy, which was closed for a five-day holiday. A spokeswoman said two embassy cars were fired on earlier in the week.

Some opposition leaders have warned that they will not accept any peace plan that does not include Aristide’s resignation, an option that he has rejected.