Haiti rebel says he's military chief

By Kevin Sullivan and Scott Wilson
The Washington Post

	RODRIGO ABD / AP Rebel leader Guy Philippe, who announced yesterday that he had become the new chief of Haiti's military, gestures during a demonstration in Port-au-Prince yesterday.
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There was increased violence in Port-au-Prince yesterday, and victims of killings were lying at intersections. Several hundred U.S. Marines were in Haiti and more were arriving as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force. They did not patrol streets, but a contingent secured the port, while others guarded government buildings and escorted diplomats around the city.

Philippe's declarations and the occupation of the former army headquarters appeared to signal an increase in the ambitions of the rebels, many of whom were once in the military. Until Jean-Bertrand Aristide took office in 1990 as the country's first freely elected president, Haiti was ruled by a succession of military-dominated governments that terrorized the country for decades.

Philippe's move was also a direct challenge to U.S. efforts to establish a new consensus government that would resolve weeks of political turmoil and violence.

"I am commander in chief of the national resistance front — military chief," Philippe, 36, said at a morning news conference. He also claimed that he accepts the authority of the new civilian president, Boniface Alexandre, who was sworn in Sunday after Aristide fled the country. But Alexandre has not been seen in public since he took office.

"He is not in control of anything but a ragtag band of people," Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega said yesterday of Philippe's claim. The rebel leader also has raised concerns by indicating he would arrest members of Aristide's government.

Philippe, a former military officer and police chief linked to coup attempts in the past, appeared early yesterday afternoon on a second-floor balcony of the country's former military headquarters.

He did not speak, but another rebel commander vowed in a screaming, fist-waving speech that the rebels would arrest Aristide's followers, including "the chief of the thugs and the criminals," he said, referring to Prime Minister Yvon Neptune. Neptune, an Aristide ally, remains in the country to participate in forming an interim government with the backing of the new president and the U.S. government.

With U.S. Marines watching from the roof and grounds of the nearby National Palace, a frenzied crowd that included rebels rampaged through the elegant two-story former army headquarters, which Aristide had turned into the Women's Affairs Ministry.

Aristide disbanded the army, long identified with repression under the 29-year rule of François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, and his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, known as "Baby Doc."

A former parish priest and champion of the poor, Aristide was deposed by a military coup in 1991 after seven months in office. A U.S. military force restored him to power in 1994 and he was re-elected president in 2000. He left the country for the Central African Republic on Sunday, after a three-week rebel insurgency left more than 70 people killed.
 
The former military building had been used to house an exhibition of folk art celebrating Haiti's 200th anniversary of independence from France. Members of the crowd dropped paintings, wooden crosses, decorative coffins and other Haitian folk art from the balcony before setting them on fire.

Hans Tippenhauer, a leader of a coalition of business and civic leaders that had been pressing for Aristide's peaceful resignation for more than a year, said that closed-door negotiations to craft a transitional government continued slowly yesterday.

Human-rights activists said they were deeply suspicious of Philippe and other rebel leaders. Some of them, including Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a former death-squad leader, have been convicted of terrorizing and killing many Haitians. Many are former officers of the Haitian army, which was the chief tool of terror of the brutal Duvalier family dictatorship from 1957 to 1986.

Reached by telephone in France by a Miami television station, Jean-Claude Duvalier, forced into exile in 1986, said he wanted to return to Haiti, the Reuters news agency reported. Running for president is "not on my agenda," Reuters reported him as saying.

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