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As hemisphere leaders meet, Haitian unrest worsens

Rebels sharpened their attacks and aid workers prepared for the worst as suspense grew in a bloody insurrection that has left at least 49 people dead.

Roadblocks have halted most food shipments since rebels trying to oust Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide seized this city last week and torched police stations in 10 other towns.

"The problem is very grave," said Raoul Elysee, of the Haitian Red Cross, meeting with rebels and aid officials to discuss ways to deliver food, medicine and fuel. He said emergency supplies of flour, cooking oil and other basics would run out in four days.

In Washington, Western Hemisphere nations called on all parties Friday to quickly implement confidence-building measures to ensure a peaceful, democratic outcome.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Aristide's verbal assurances have not been enough.

"What we need now is action," Powell said after meeting with hemispheric colleagues.

Aristide, he said, "must reach out to the opposition, to make sure that thugs are not allowed to break up peaceful demonstrations."

On Thursday, Aristide militants hurled rocks and blocked a protest route to crush an opposition demonstration in Port-au-Prince, the capital.

The government said between 7 and a dozen attackers have been arrested, but a foreign technical adviser to the police said there have been no arrests.

Powell said the US and other hemispheric countries agree on the need for a constitutional outcome. "We will accept no outcome that, in any way, attempts to remove the elected president of Haiti," he said.

Opposition politicians refuse to participate in elections to rectify flawed 2000 balloting, swept by Aristide's party, unless Haiti's leader steps down. He refuses.

The rebels say they will only lay down their weapons if they oust Aristide.

Many who once backed Aristide have turned on him as poverty deepens while the president's clique enjoys lavish lifestyles that some charge are funded by corruption.

At the hospital in Gonaives, the fourth-largest city where the rebellion erupted Feb. 5, more than a dozen people waited to see doctors who never showed up. The Red Cross warned the unrest was jeopardizing urgent health care needs.

Relatives took patients from the hospital after the fighting broke out, carrying them on their backs or on motorcycles, said Cerrament Herat, 68, a hospital janitor.

Only one badly malnourished man remained in the hospital Friday, lying unattended in a bed.

Pierre Joseph, another janitor, said doctors were afraid to return following a gun battle at the hospital a week ago, when police stormed in carrying a wounded officer.

With rebels in pursuit and officers in a panic, the police opened fire inside the hospital, killing at least three civilian bystanders who were trying to hide in the building, he said.

Rebels dragged a wounded officer from the hospital and stoned him to death, smashing in his head, according to an AP photographer. Police had tried to retake the city, but failed.
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