Rally Broken Up in Haiti; 2 Killed

Angry supporters of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, accusing the United States of having abducted their leader, attempted Thursday to march on the National Palace, seat of Haiti’s new leadership, but were driven off by police firing tear-gas grenades.

The crowd of 2,000 retreated into the hillside slum neighborhood of Bel Air, smashing car windshields and pillaging the paltry stands of sidewalk merchants. Gunshots, including staccato bursts of what sounded like automatic weapons, split the noonday air, and police blamed bands of heavily armed pro-Aristide thugs ensconced in the impoverished area.

At least two deaths and half a dozen injuries were reported.

Although Haiti’s interim prime minister, Gerard Latortue, has called for reconciliation and a government of national unity to end his homeland’s deep poverty and endemic instability, many of the Haitians who marched and chanted in the heat said Aristide, who resigned and fled to exile in the Central African Republic on Feb. 29, remained their country’s rightful leader.

“We already voted, and we have only one president in Haiti: Jean-Bertrand Aristide,” said Bob Moliere, a leader of Thursday’s demonstration. “He was the victim of a plot. It was a kidnapping by [President] Bush and [French President Jacques] Chirac.”

“Bush terrorist!” was the cry raised at one point by the marchers, who wound for more than two hours through narrow, stinking streets in Bel Air where wild pigs root for nourishment in open-air sewers. Many people carried parasols to protect themselves from the withering sun.

At one point, protesters dusted off and updated a slogan from the slave uprising that gave Haiti independence from France 200 years ago: “If Aristide is not here, cut off heads and burn down houses!”

Meetings on Cabinet

Inside the National Palace, Latortue, an economist and former foreign minister who had been living in Florida, met during the morning with Haiti’s interim president, Boniface Alexandre, on forming a new Cabinet, expected by this weekend.

“We are going to work together and reconcile the country with itself,” Latortue said. “We have the same program for the country,” said Alexandre, the former head of Haiti’s highest court.

As proof of his desire to end Haiti’s political divisions, the 69-year-old Latortue has said, he wants his Cabinet to include the finalists he beat out for the prime minister’s post: retired army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Herard Abraham, who would be in charge of restoring law and order, and Smarck Michel, a former prime minister under Aristide who would become planning minister.

For some Haitians, the issue of how Aristide left office will not go away soon, and could seriously undermine the authority of their countrymen now in charge. After arriving in the Central African Republic from Haiti, Aristide announced that he had been the victim of a “political kidnapping” engineered by the Bush administration and that he had been forced to relinquish office.

Coercion Denied

The controversy over the circumstances of his departure could intensify next week, when the former president and his American wife are scheduled to return to the Caribbean to be reunited with their two young daughters on the island of Jamaica. P.J. Patterson, Jamaica’s prime minister, made the former Haitian first family’s travel plans public Thursday.

African and Caribbean nations have demanded an international investigation into the reasons for Aristide’s flight, which the United States has maintained was voluntary. Perhaps as a result of the continuing controversy inside and outside Haiti, U.S. Ambassador James B. Foley granted an interview to the BBC, aired Thursday, during which he asserted that the former president “never once said that he didn’t want to go.”

According to the head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Haiti, Aristide “never said: ‘I think you are wrong. I think your assessment is wrong. I’m going to stay. I’m going to ride it out.’ ”

About 300 people have lost their lives in Haiti since an armed rebellion against Aristide erupted in early February.

Hospital officials said two people were killed and half a dozen were injured by Thursday’s gunfire. One of the wounded, a 19-year-old woman, said she was among the pro-Aristide marchers when she was hit by a bullet. She said the shot was fired by police. She was hospitalized, her condition unknown, Thursday evening.

Leon Charles, director of the Haitian National Police, said the march had not been authorized and that he would do everything possible to track down and “put out of commission” the pro-Aristide toughs he blamed for the resulting violence.

To stanch political killings and mayhem in Haiti, the United States announced this week that the 1,600 Marines sent to Haiti would begin collecting weapons that were in private hands illegally. Before dawn Thursday, assisted by French troops who cordoned off the neighborhood, Marines and Haitian police knocked at the door of one well-known Aristide supporter in the Haitian capital’s Turgeau district. The house was searched, but no arms were found, said Staff Sgt. Tim Edwards, a Marine spokesman.

“This is the first time we’ve done what Marines call a cordon-knock,” Edwards said. “We’ll continue to do so.”