Haiti
vowed on Monday to hold presidential elections in 2005, and visiting U.S. Secretary
of
State
Colin Powell pledged U.S. support to help the poorest country in the Americas
start over after a bloody revolt.
Interim
Prime Minister Gerard Latortue told a news conference with Powell at Port-au-Prince's
heavily guarded airport Haiti's next president would take the reins in February
2006 -- when ousted ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's term was originally
due to end.
Powell,
the first high-ranking U.S. official to visit Haiti since Aristide went into exile
on Feb. 29, hit back at critics who say U.S. President Bush's administration failed
to support the former leader and pressured him to resign.
He
also rejected a call by the 15-nation Caribbean Community for a probe into Aristide's
ouster.
"It
was only six weeks ago that Haiti was on the verge of ... total security collapse.
On that last weekend in February, I believe we prevented a bloodbath from happening,"
Powell said as soldiers patrolled nearby with M-16s at the ready.
"Our
purpose is to help the people and leadership of Haiti make a new beginning,"
he added, calling on armed gangs and rebels who led the revolt against Aristide
to lay down arms. "Without disarmament, Haiti's democracy will remain at
risk."
Powell
said he and Latortue had discussed "the importance of getting guns off the
street and ... out of the hands of thugs and criminals."
The
Secretary of State did not make clear if he was specifically referring to the
armed gangs and human rights violators who led the revolt. Powell called them
"thugs" before Aristide's overthrow, but Latortue has since hailed them
as "freedom fighters."
PATROLS
GO ON
Shortly
before Powell's arrival, rights watchdog Human Rights Watch urged him to pressure
the new Haitian leaders into ensuring justice was "even-handed" and
not "political."
"The
contrast between the Haitian government's eagerness to prosecute former Aristide
officials and its indifference to the abusive record of certain rebel leaders
could not be more stark," said Joanne Mariner of its Americas Division.
U.S.
Marines spearheading a 3,600-strong U.N.-sanctioned peacekeeping force continued
regular daily patrols around the slum-ridden capital, and said all was calm.
Downtown
Port-au-Prince was paralyzed by the customary traffic gridlock and street vendors
laid out fruit and vegetables by gutters flowing with raw sewage and trash near
an AIDS clinic that Powell visited.
Potshots
at Marines by marauding street gangs have petered out in the weeks following Aristide's
overthrow. Locals greet patrols with smiles and a "bonjour!," and say
they feel safer.
But
former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, living in hiding after receiving death threats,
appealed to the United States to stamp out what supporters of Aristide's Lavalas
Family party say is a witch-hunt against them.
"I
call on the U.S. to guarantee the freedom of expression and (political) association,"
Neptune said by phone.
Aristide
became Haiti's first freely elected leader in 1991 but was pushed out by a coup.
He was restored by a U.S.-led intervention in 1994 and won a second term in 2000.
Accused
by political foes of corruption and human rights violations, he was pressured
to leave Haiti by the United States and other nations after the armed revolt broke
out in February.
