Rebels close in on capital of Haiti as anarchy rises

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Rebels seeking to oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide seized a strategic town Friday and said they will blockade the chaotic capital to "close the circle" around the embattled leader. Aristide said he wouldn't step down.

Pentagon officials are weighing the possibility of sending troops to waters off Haiti to guard against a possible refugee crisis and to protect the estimated 20,000 Americans there.

Aristide, under increasing pressure to relinquish power from the United States and the rebels, said "I have the responsibility as an elected president to stay where I am."

Chaos increasingly engulfed the capital city. Armed thugs hijacked cars at will. Looters hit the capital's seaport, stealing almost everything in sight and setting ablaze a freight terminal. Crowds jammed into the airport, but most flights were canceled.

Hundreds of people looted Port-au-Prince's seaport as smoke wafted from the smoldering ruins of a torched freight terminal. No police were in sight.

Shops put up hurricane shutters against looters, and people stayed home behind locked doors, leaving the streets to gangs of pro-Aristide thugs who hijacked cars, robbed people at barricades and roamed the street on foot yelling "Five years, five years." Aristide was elected to a five-year term that ends February 2006.

A few police patrolled in cars, but were vastly outnumbered by the militants.

The rebels, who have overrun at least half of Haiti since they began the uprising three weeks ago, closed in on the seaside capital in a pincer movement, overrunning villages as police fled.

Police officers in Croix-des-Bouquets, just nine miles northeast of Port-au-Prince, shed their uniforms for civilian clothes, appeared to have abandoned their guns and looked ready to flee.

Guy Philippe, commander of the motley group of Haitian rebels, said he intended to besiege the capital and "close the circle" around Aristide.

"We want to block Port-au-Prince totally," he told reporters in Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city, which the rebels seized on Sunday. He said the rebels would try to cut land routes into the capital and would send two boats to attempt to prevent ships from bringing in supplies.

"Port-au-Prince now ... would be very hard to take it. It would be a lot of fight, a lot of death," Philippe said. "So what we want is desperation first."

That strategy threatens further misery to residents, already lining up for scarce gas and dwindling fresh produce since the rebels cut supplies from the central Artibonite district, which is Haiti's breadbasket.

Human Rights Watch warned of "widespread bloodshed and indiscriminate destruction of civilian property" if the rebels attacked Port-au-Prince.

Philippe said the rebels encountered little resistance as they closed in on the capital.

On Friday, rebels were seen by an Associated Press reporter in Mirebalais, 25 miles northeast of Port-au-Prince sitting astride a strategic crossroad leading west to the government-held town of St. Marc, south to the capital, east to the Dominican Republic and north into territory where the rebels have chased police from a score of towns.

The rebels arrived in a truck, firing their guns, and freed 67 prisoners, said David Joseph, a 40-year-old law student. He said most of the fighters then left in two commandeered cars.

As he spoke, about a dozen rebels, some wearing camouflage, patrolled in a truck.

"I would gladly join them if I had a gun," Joseph said.

Philippe said rebels occupied part of Jeremie, in their first sortie on Haiti's western peninsula.

Also on the peninsula, Haiti's third-largest city, the southern port of Les Cayes, fell Thursday to the Base Resistance, a rebel faction whose origins and alliances were not immediately clear.

Robbins Jean, an Aristide youth organizer, criticized the United States for pressuring Aristide.

"You tell George W. Bush he is a hypocrite and an assassin because the terrorists are killing the Haitian people," Jean, 25, told a reporter near the National Palace, where hundreds of youths -- armed with old rifles and pistols, machetes and even a dull, rusty ax -- gathered to repel any rebels.

"We will fight to the death," Jean declared.

In Paris, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin met with Aristide's chief of staff Jean-Claude Desgranges and his Foreign Minister Joseph Antonio and repeated his call for Aristide to resign.

"It's for President Aristide, who bears a heavy responsibility in the current situation, to draw the consequences of the impasse," officials said de Villepin told the Haitians. It was not clear how the message was received. Antonio abruptly canceled a scheduled news conference.

The rebellion erupted Feb. 5 in western Gonaives, the fourth-largest city. About 80 people, half of them police officers, have been killed so far.

The crisis has been brewing since Aristide's party swept flawed legislative elections in 2000 and international donors froze millions of dollars in aid.

Aristide, a former priest of Haiti's slums who in 1990 became its first freely elected leader, has lost popularity amid accusations he condoned corruption, failed to help the poor and had thugs attack political opponents.

He has agreed to a U.S.-backed plan that requires him to share power with his opponents, but the political opposition rejected the proposal, insisting he resign.

A senior U.S. official said the Bush administration has concluded that the best way to prevent the insurgents from seizing power is for Aristide should resign and transfer power to Supreme Court Chief Justice Boniface Alexandre, his constitutional successor. He is known in Haiti for his honesty.

------

Associated Press reporter Ian James contributed to this report from Cap-Haitien and AP reporters Michael Norton and Mark Stevenson from Port-au-Prince.