Aristide

OUSTED HAITIAN President Jean-Bertrand Aristide wasn't kidnapped from his homeland in the midst of Haiti's worst political violence in a decade - the United States made Mr. Aristide an offer he couldn't refuse. With rebel insurgents poised to take the Haitian capital and violently drive Mr. Aristide from his palace (or worse), the Bush administration engineered his leave after refusing to bolster his security force with U.S. Marines. And yet Mr. Aristide's claim refuses to die. The administration has no one to blame but itself.

WASHINGTON - In the last century, the United States mounted two major interventions in Haiti, both expensive failures. Before sending thousands of troops on another dubious errand, Congress and the White House would do well to ponder some lessons learned. The first is don't do everything yourself. In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson sent U.S. Marines to put down an uprising. They stayed for 19 years and largely ran the government. They paid off Haiti's debts, paved streets and developed Haiti's public health infrastructure.

WASHINGTON - The crisis that pulled American troops back into Haiti has its roots in a decade of failure for which few escape blame - not Jean-Bertrand Aristide, not his political opposition, and not the administrations of Bill Clinton or President Bush. Aristide's commitment to democracy and reform - even his mental health - were called into question well before Clinton dispatched 20,000 troops in 1994 to reverse a military coup that had driven him from power. Although he had been overwhelmingly elected in 1990 and was a hero to Haiti's poor masses, the former Catholic priest's record as a populist was dotted with instances of incitement to violence that frightened the country's business elite and the military.

HAITIANS COULDN'T escape their past, and, in the end, neither could President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Haiti's first democratically-elected president was forced to flee his country yesterday like despots before him. Since the island nation's liberation from France 200 years ago, rebellions and coup d'etats have changed the political landscape, and not always for the better. Rebel insurgents whose armed followers battled their way to the capital and a coalition of opposition groups that demanded Mr. Aristide's resignation can claim victory now. But who will claim the mantle of power in Haiti?

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - First word came as the shrill morning calls of roosters were echoing yesterday off the walls of shantytowns and villas in this still slumbering Caribbean capital city. Within minutes, there were explosions of celebratory gunfire, happy cries of "ca y est!" - "it's over!" - and outbreaks of looting by mobs. In the wealthy hillside suburb of Petionville, scores of boys and young men sacked an abandoned police station, carrying away police helmets and shields, thermos bottles and battered file cabinets.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush ordered hundreds of U.S. Marines to begin restoring order and serve as the vanguard for a multinational force in Haiti yesterday after the Caribbean nation's president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, went into exile, forced out of office by a growing rebellion and intense international pressure. Shortly after dawn yesterday, Aristide, protected by U.S. security forces, boarded a plane outside the capital, Port-au-Prince, and left the country, his final destination unknown.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - After a U.S. appeal for an end to violence by supporters of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Arisitide as well as by armed rebels threatening to attack here, both factions stood back yesterday from a looming clash in this terrified capital. Nonetheless, the White House sharply escalated its criticism of Aristide yesterday, suggesting in the bluntest terms yet that he should surrender his office to restore peace. "The long-simmering crisis is largely of Mr. Aristide's doing," the White House statement said, and "his own actions have called into question his fitness to remain in office."

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - If they take power, the Haitian rebels closing in on this capital city are promising a new and more democratic era in this historically troubled and violent country. But experts and diplomats say several of the top rebel leaders are former military and police officials who are suspected of major human-rights violations while in power and who have allegedly financed their insurgency with past profits from the drug trade. That puts the would-be leaders on similar footing with the government of embattled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who U.S. officials and others say has allowed Haiti to become one of the region's most significant transit points for Colombian cocaine on its way to the United States.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - With a growing rebel uprising closing in and security forces nowhere in sight, Haiti's capital collapsed yesterday into a chaos of street executions, arson and looting. Masked gunmen patrolling the city in pickups fired into the air while looters raided dockside warehouses. Pistol-waving youths at downtown roadblocks robbed foreigners of money, cell phones and, in some cases, their cars. Bodies, some mutilated, lay in the streets. More than three weeks into an armed uprising that has quickly seized the northern half of the country, it appeared that an increasingly isolated President Jean-Bertrand Aristide finally had unleashed his chimeres - Creole for "monsters" - in a desperate last bid to remain in power.

WASHINGTON - The United States increased the pressure on Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to step down yesterday, while resisting urgent calls for an international force to restore order in the strife-torn Caribbean nation. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, speaking to reporters, suggested that Aristide's continued hold on power may be at odds with the welfare of the people of Haiti and that he should consider resigning. "Whether or not he is able to effectively continue as president is something he will have to examine," Powell said.