Rebels threatened to take over Haiti's second-largest city unless President Jean Bertrand Aristide resigned, as the embattled leader turned down a partial solution to a bloody uprising French aid groups said could soon turn into a humanitarian disaster.
"We are not indifferent to the massacres committed by Aristide's people, and if he does not resign we will liberate Cap-Haitien, then the West," rebel leader Guy Philippe said Wednesday in the rebel-held northern city of Gonaive.
"The international community must tell him to resign quickly, or else we will take the palace," Philippe said in a reference to the National Palace and presidential seat in Port-au-Prince, which is in Haiti's western department.
Philippe, a former police chief, spoke after armed anti-government rebels renamed their movement the National Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Haiti and made him their commander.
The UN Security Council and South American leaders called for a peaceful solution to the escalating crisis in Haiti, where more than 55 people have been killed in the past two weeks in an armed uprising against the government.
Aristide, meanwhile, refused to name a new prime minister who would enjoy the support of the opposition, as part of a compromise solution for defusing the crisis put together by the 15-nation Caribbean Community (Caricom).
"If you are talking about the opposition that is publicly supporting terrorists, don't think I will have the irresponsibility of handing them over such a post," Aristide said Wednesday in an interview with Radio Canada.
Caricom, which is opposed to a forced removal of the Haitian president, has also called for freeing political prisoners and disbanding armed militias.
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