HAITI Armed rebels try to enter Gonaives

The city has seen much looting since it was hit by Hurricane Jeanne's effects.
GONAIVES, Haiti (AP) -- Scores of armed rebels approached Gonaives and some sneaked into the city despite opposition from U.N. peacekeepers, ratcheting up more tension in the city of a quarter million devastated by floods more than a week ago.
Barefooted survivors still walk through sewage and mud. Gangsters are looting food aid. Widespread damage to crops and livestock has experts fearing a famine.
Radio Vision 2000 reported Wednesday that about 150 heavily armed rebels in trucks tried to enter the city in northwest Haiti but turned around when ordered to by U.N. peacekeepers guarding the entrance, which has been a flashpoint for looting.
But an AP reporter encountered about 20 fatigue-clad rebels inside the city as darkness fell. They were in front of the main international food aid warehouse belonging to CARE and confronting U.N. troops. The only visible weapons the rebels had were a rifle, a pistol and a knife.
What rebels said
The rebels were telling the peacekeepers they had come to provide security and patrol the city. The peacekeepers, who have complained about lack of help from Haiti's demoralized police force, said they would welcome the help but that the rebels would have to give up their guns.
The confrontation occurred soon after people looted a food warehouse, according to Haitian radio reports. CARE, an international humanitarian organization, said it was not its warehouse, as some had reported. Anne Poulsen of the U.N. World Food Program, which is providing most food in Gonaives, said it was thought to be a government warehouse.
Agriculture Minister Phillipe Mathieu told reporters Tuesday that "We believe the lootings are planned by gangs."
At the warehouse, one peacekeeper remonstrated the rebels: "We were sent here [to Haiti] because you are not protecting people."
Gonaives' Cannibal Army street gang rose up against the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February, sparking a rebellion that quickly was joined by soldiers from the former Haitian army that Aristide disbanded in 1995. The rebels overran half the country in three weeks and Aristide fled his Caribbean country -- under pressure with the United States and France demanding his resignation and refusing to send troops to his aid.
U.S. troops arrived as he departed but did little to disarm the rebels, who are demanding the reinstatement of the army and have friendly relations with the U.S.-installed interim government.
Group's goal
Rebels have formed a political party which Aristide supporters -- including a vast majority of Haiti's impoverished peasants and slum dwellers -- say is aimed at returning power in the country to the hands of a lighter-skinned elite that has become wealthy on the backs of Haiti's poor.
Aristide became Haiti's first freely elected president in 1990, chosen for his fiery rhetoric as a slum priest that fueled a revolution and ended the 28-year Duvalier family dictatorship. He was ousted within months by the army, returned by a U.S. invasion in 1994, was forced to step down by U.S. pressure and a constitutional clause forbidding two-term presidencies, and was re-elected in 2000.
Hurricane Jeanne ravaged an estimated 24,700 acres of the most fertile land in Haiti, with mud covering the area that produces up to 40 percent of the bananas, beans and sweet potatoes consumed in the country, according to agronomist Jean-Andre Victor.
"If Haitian-international cooperation is slow to respond [to farmers' needs], there is risk of famine in those regions," Victor warned.