Cap-Haïtien, Haiti — A convicted assassin who commands a group of armed rebels held high-level talks Monday about surrendering power to police in Haiti's second city, even as he vowed to kill ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide if he returns from exile.
The contradictory messages underscore difficulties facing an interim government criticized for praising the rebels and forming alliances with shadowy leaders like Louis-Jodel Chamblain, co-leader of a disbanded army death squad.
Mr. Chamblain's rebels still control much of northern Haiti, manning police stations that they torched during the rebellion and patrolling armed through the same cities that French troops are protecting.
A small contingent of Haitian police officers who fled the rebels have returned to their posts, but they lack both weapons and vehicles looted during the fighting and a clear mandate from the interim government of Prime Minister Gérard Latortue.
Mr. Chamblain told Associated Press that his rebels will surrender control of two police stations in Cap-Haïtien, the northern port of 500,000 that is Haiti's second-largest city, and are considering ceding control of others in the north.
“We're talking and we're working with the police,” he said. “We're co-operating and we're trying to work together.”
He was not prepared, however, to make any concessions to the ousted Mr. Aristide. Once wildly popular, Mr. Aristide had lost support as he failed to make good on promises to improve life in the hemisphere's most impoverished country and responded to growing opposition by using police and street gangs to attack his critics.
A street gang that once supported Mr. Aristide turned on him to start the rebellion Feb. 5 in the northern city of Gonaïves, and soon was joined by ex-soldiers such as Mr. Chamblain, who returned from exile to overrun half the country and were preparing to attack the capital when Mr. Aristide fled Feb. 29.
Mr. Chamblain contended that Mr. Aristide sent henchmen to kill Mr. Chamblain's pregnant wife in 1991, as Mr. Aristide was warning that the army was threatening to topple him.
“We're enemies,” said Mr. Chamblain, outside a hillside hotel his rebels have frequented since taking control of Cap-Haïtien Feb. 22. “If Aristide was here right now, I would do to him exactly what he had the courage to do to my wife and unborn child.”
Mr. Aristide, who could not be reached for comment at his temporary exile in neighbouring Jamaica, was ousted by the army in September, 1991, a few months after being elected Haiti's first democratically elected leader. He was restored in 1994 by a U.S. intervention.
This time, the United States refused pleas for an intervention to save Mr. Aristide, accusing him of running a corrupt and abusive government, and sent troops only on the day he fled the country.
Mr. Aristide accuses the United States of forcing him from power, charges that the United States vehemently denies but which the 15-country Caribbean Community is asking the UN General Assembly to investigate.
The United States is leading a 3,500-strong force of international peacekeepers. Canada has committed about 450 military personnel to the effort to restore stability to Haiti.
International human-rights groups say the peacekeepers should arrest people such as Mr. Chamblain, who was convicted in his absence and received two sentences of life imprisonment for his role in the assassinations of Mr. Aristide's justice minister Guy Mallary and financier Antoine Izmery. Mr. Chamblain was co-leader of the FRAPH death squad blamed for killing, torturing and maiming thousands of Aristide supporters under the coup regime.
Meanwhile, Aristide officials and supporters say they are being persecuted by the new government, and dozens are in hiding, complicating efforts to reunite the country of eight million torn apart by the rebellion that killed more than 300 people and injured scores more.
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