Concern mounts over Haiti bloodshed
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Police patrol in Port-au-Prince during a march against President Jean Bertrand Aristide.
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Former Haitian paramilitaries return from exile to assist rebels fighting President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
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GONAIVES, Haiti (CNN) -- International concern is growing about a rebel bid in Haiti to oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide that has left more than 50 people dead.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Tuesday expressed "extreme concern" about the uprising. He said he may have some announcements on the situation in the French-speaking Caribbean nation in the next few days.
Rebels now control much of the north of the country. Aristide has appealed for international help to end the 11-day-old rebellion.
Annan said the United Nations had been in touch with Caribbean and Latin American regional organizations to reassess U.N. participation and how the international community can become more engaged.
Amid fears of a refugee crisis, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday that Washington has "no enthusiasm" for sending military or police forces to Haiti and said the Bush administration was working toward a political solution to the bloody rebellion. (More on Powell's remarks)
Powell said the United States was working with France as well as the Organization of American States and other groups to get a dialogue under way between Aristide and his rivals.
"There is frankly no enthusiasm right now for sending in military or police forces to put down the violence that we are seeing," Powell said.
He indicated that the United States would welcome the dispatch of police units to enforce a political settlement should one be reached. He rejected assertions by some in Haiti that no solution is possible so long as Aristide remains in office.
"We cannot buy into the proposition that the elected president must be forced out of office by thugs and those who do not respect the law," Powell said.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin on Tuesday offered humanitarian aid to the former French colony but stopped short of committing French soldiers as a peacekeeping force.
"We have the means -- and many friendly countries are mobilized and ready to act," de Villepin said. "We have to find a way to do this in liaison with the different Haitian parties." (Full story)
The slayings of three police officers Monday pushed the death toll since February 5, when rebels seized the northern city of Gonaives, to more than 50. The town of some 200,000 remains in rebel hands.
Rebels control the main roads north of the capital and have cut off northern Haiti as they close in on the capital, Port-au-Prince.
CNN correspondent Lucia Newman, reporting from Haiti, said the rebels had now joined forces with their once sworn enemies -- paramilitary and military leaders who had supported the former military dictatorship -- to oust Aristide.
These forces have returned from exile in the neighboring Dominican Republic just a few days ago and are believed to be heavily armed.
In Hinche on Monday, about 50 rebels killed three officers and then burned the police station before other officers left the city, witnesses said. Hinche, with a population of 50,000, is about 112 kilometers (70 miles) northeast of Port-au-Prince.
"Blood has flowed in Hinche," Aristide told reporters late Monday, adding that he has asked for assistance from the Organization of American States. "It may be that the police cannot cope with this kind of attack."
Discontent has grown in Haiti, home to 8 million people, since Aristide's party swept flawed legislative elections in 2000. Opposition politicians refuse to participate in new elections unless the president steps down, but Aristide insists he will stay until his term ends in February 2006.
The rebels who took Hinche were led by Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a former soldier who commanded a feared paramilitary group that killed and maimed hundreds of Aristide supporters under a military dictatorship between 1991 and 1994.
Aristide, a priest who preached revolution to Haiti's poor, swept 1990 elections to become the country's first freely elected leader. He was ousted in a coup in 1991 and was restored to power when the United States sent 20,000 troops to Haiti in 1994.
He disbanded the army in 1995. In its place, the country has a 5,000-member police force that is outnumbered and outgunned by the rebels in outlying posts.
The rebels are thought to number no more than 100 in Gonaives. But they repelled a police attack to retake the city last week in fighting that killed 30 people, mostly officers, according to the Haitian Red Cross.
On Monday, rebels escorted an aid convoy past shipping containers, old refrigerators and burned-out cars blocking the entrance to Gonaives.
Led by the Geneva, Switzerland-based International Committee of the Red Cross, the convoy carried 1.6 tonnes of supplies, including blood and surgical equipment.
The Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti and fears an exodus of refugees, has appealed for urgent international intervention.
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
