Haiti's brutal conflict moved from the streets to the political arena after rebels rolled into the capital to cheering crowds, and US Marines and French troops secured key sites around the city.
But the aftershocks of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's departure were still echoing from the streets of Port-au-Prince to the halls of Washington, as rebels refused to fade into the background and Aristide's accusations that he was forced out by the Americans dogged US officials.
Aristide told reporters in a telephone interview Monday that he was "forced to leave" Haiti by US military forces. He added that they would "start shooting and be killing" if he refused, but it was unclear if he was referring to rebels or US agents.
American officials dismissed Aristide's claim. US Secretary of State Colin Powell called the allegations "absolutely baseless, absurd." But US officials acknowledged privately that Aristide was told that if he remained in Haiti, US forces would not protect him from the rebels who had threatened to kill him.
Aristide, the country's first democratically elected president since independence from French rule, resigned Sunday and left Haiti for exile, arriving in the impoverished Central African Republic early Monday, after rebels began an uprising earlier this month seeking his ouster. Supreme Court Justice Boniface Alexandre became the interim president.
US plans for a quiet, orderly transition appeared threatened, despite the arrival of hundreds of American, French and Canadian soldiers as an interim peacekeeping force.
Rebels had promised to lay down their arms if their main demand -- Aristide's resignation -- was met, but they instead swaggered into the capital on Monday and hinted they were here to stay. They said they would just tolerate police and international peacekeepers, while enforcing their own kind of justice.
One young rebel told a reporter he had shot looters Sunday and predicted militant members of Aristide's Lavalas party would be executed.
"I shot some looters yesterday. They have to be shot," said the rebel, who goes by the nom-de-guerre "Faustin."
"There are some very minimal numbers of Lavalas who cannot be saved," he said.
"We don't need peacekeepers, we need military help. We need more guns," said second-tier rebel leader Paul Arcelin, as the motley crew of former police and military officers settled into the police headquarters in front of the National Palace, patrolled by US Marines just a few hundred meters away.
The rebels said they intended to return the old building to its previous function as army HQ, revive the army that ousted Aristide in 1991 and which he disbanded in 1995, and enforce a curfew.
Scattered looting continued, police cleared the city of almost all the rebel barricades, but gunfire remained in some neighborhoods and bound, executed bodies continued to show up in the streets.
In the capital, there were reports of reprisal killings of militant Aristide supporters who had been accused of terrorizing people during his rule. A reporter saw four bodies at a Carrefour store on the outskirts of the capital, three of them with hands tied and shot in the head.
Aristide's home in the suburb of Tabarre was looted and trashed.
Several hundred US, French and Canadian troops have arrived in Haiti to form an international force authorized on Sunday by the UN Security Council. The troops began securing diplomatic missions and key sites, but they said they were not in Haiti as police.
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