Marines Kill Two Haitians in Gun Battles
By PETER PRENGAMAN and IAN JAMES, Associated Press Writers
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - U.S. Marines shot and killed at least two gunmen who opened fire near the private residence of Haiti's outgoing prime minister, Staff Sgt. Timothy Edwards told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
It was the third fatal shooting by U.S. Marines in three days. On Sunday, they killed an alleged gunman who opened fire on a demonstration, and on Monday they killed a driver speeding toward a checkpoint.
Edwards said the Marines were patrolling Tuesday evening near the private residence of outgoing Prime Minister Yvon Neptune when they came under "hostile fire." He said they then shot and killed at least two gunmen. No peacekeepers were wounded.
U.S. Southern Command spokesman Raul Duany said the gunmen were shooting from a rooftop near the prime minister's residence.
The U.S. Defense Department has defended the Marines' actions, saying they acted within their orders to fire when they felt threatened.
The shooting came as peacekeepers tried to begin disarming the general population, a potentially volatile move after weeks of bloodshed. There was little evidence of peacekeeper disarmament early Wednesday.
Many supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide were angry over the decision Tuesday to name Gerard Latortue as the country's new prime minister. Latortue, who lives in Miami and has been critical of Aristide, was scheduled to arrive in Haiti later Wednesday.
"He doesn't understand the reality of the country," said Jacques Pierre, a 49-year-old Aristide supporter. "He doesn't understand our hunger."
Latortue, a former U.N. official and foreign minister, faces the difficult task of helping to restore peace in this troubled Caribbean nation following a monthlong insurgency that helped drive Aristide from power on Feb. 29.
"I can facilitate the national reconciliation," Latortue told The Miami Herald in an article published Wednesday. "It is the most important thing today in Haiti after all the divisions we had in Aristide.
"It is time for us to forget our differences and come together for the country in this bicentennial year."
Aristide fled after rebels seized control of half the country, sparking a frenzy of looting and violence. More than 400 people have died in the rebellion and reprisal killings.
In exile in Central African Republic, Aristide claimed he was forced out by the U.S. government and insisted that he was still the president of Haiti. The U.S. government has denied the claim.
On Wednesday, Aristide's lawyers said they were preparing cases accusing authorities in the United States and France of abducting him and forcing him into exile.
In the United States, "there are preparations for a kidnapping case against the American authorities," U.S. lawyer Brian Concannon said in Paris after meeting Aristide in Central African Republic. Concannon did not provide further details.
Another U.S. lawyer for Aristide, Ira Kurzban, has sent a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft asking the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the circumstances of Aristide's departure.
Aristide has been staying in the presidential palace in Central African Republic since March 1. A delegation of South African officials arrived there Wednesday for talks with Aristide about his long-term asylum plans, Central African Republic officials said.
U.S. Col. Charles Gurganus told reporters in Port-au-Prince that a joint disarmament program with Haitian police would begin Wednesday. He called on Haitians to tell peacekeepers who has weapons and to turn in any arms, but he gave few details of how the program will work.
"The disarmament will be both active and reactive, but I'm not going to say any more about that," he said. Rebel groups and Aristide loyalists have threatened violence if weapons aren't taken away from their enemies.
Since the U.S.- and French-led peacekeepers arrived a week ago, there has been confusion over who is in charge of disarming groups. On Monday, Gurganus said disarming rebels was not part of the peacekeepers' mission, but he indicated that could change if police asked for help.
After five days of private meetings, the seven-member Council of Sages settled on Latortue, who also served as an international business consultant in Miami.
Latortue and interim President Boniface Alexandre will work toward organizing elections and building a new government for Haiti. Under Aristide, the prime minister's position was largely ceremonial. But Latortue's position will be that of a powerbroker and has the potential of carrying enough weight to smooth political divisions.
Council member Dr. Ariel Henry said Latortue was chosen because the council believed he was "an independent guy, a democrat." Councilor Anne-Marie Issa described him as someone "to pull everybody together."
Neptune stayed in his post even after Aristide fled the country, and Aristide opponents have demanded that he be replaced.
Also Tuesday, CIA Director George J. Tenet warned that in Haiti, "a humanitarian disaster or mass migration remains possible."
"A cycle of clashes and revenge killings could easily be set off, given the large number of angry, well-armed people on both sides," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee (news - web sites) in Washington. "Improving security will require the difficult task of disarming armed groups and augmenting and retraining a national security force."
U.S. forces in Haiti, about 1,600 strong, have a limited set of circumstances during which they can use deadly force. They cannot stop looting, even of American companies, nor can they stop Haitian-on-Haitian violence, officials said.
Aristide was a popular slum priest, elected on promises to champion the poor who make up the vast majority of Haiti's 8 million people. But he has lost support, with Haitians saying he failed to improve their lives, condoned corruption and used police and armed supporters to attack political opponents.
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Associated Press Writers Paisley Dodds and Michael Norton contributed to this story from Port-au-Prince and Kingston, Jamaica.
By MATT MOORE, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen posing as police at a makeshift checkpoint south of Baghdad killed two American civilians and their Iraqi translator — all employees of the U.S.-led coalition, U.S. officials said Wednesday.
In the northern town of Kirkuk, gunmen wounded three American soldiers near a stadium, the U.S. military said Wednesday.
The gunmen escaped after Monday's attack on soldiers from the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division, Army spokesman Maj. Neal O'Brien said. The wounded were airlifted to Baghdad for treatment, he said at the American base in the central city of Tikrit.
In another southern area, four Iraqi policemen died in a shootout with a local militia.
The deaths at the checkpoint came when the gunmen stopped the car Tuesday night outside Hillah, 35 miles south of Baghdad, Polish Col. Robert Strzelecki said. The attackers shot the passengers and then took the vehicle, he said.
Polish troops later intercepted the car, arrested five Iraqis in it and found the bodies inside, said Strzelecki, speaking from the Camp Babylon headquarters of the Polish-led multinational force in Iraq. In Baghdad, a coalition spokesman confirmed the deaths.
Authorities did not immediately release the victims' identities. The Polish News Agency reported that one of those killed worked for the coalition press office.
Checkpoints manned by Iraqis or coalition forces are common on Iraq's main roads, and this appeared to be the first time gunmen have posed as police at a roadblock.
Further south, Iraqi police tried Tuesday night to enter a building where a Shiite militia was holding two civilians in the city of Nasiriyah, a coalition spokesman said. In a shootout, four Iraqi policemen were killed and two wounded.
The standoff finally ended when Italian security forces stormed the building, rescued the civilians and arrested eight militia members, the spokesman said. One Italian Carabinieri officer was slightly injured.
The militia, known as Citizens' Security Group, acts as a security force for a number of Shiite political parties. Such militias, which in some towns try to enforce a brand of Islamic law, often have tense relations with the U.S.-trained Iraqi police force.
In the western town of Qaim, near the Syrian border, gunmen killed two police officers and critically wounded a third Wednesday while the police were having lunch in a restaurant, police said.
Meanwhile, Abul Abbas, the Palestinian mastermind of the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro passenger ship that left a wheelchair-bound American tourist dead, died of natural causes while in American custody in Baghdad, U.S. officials in Iraq said Wednesday.
Abbas, who died Monday, was captured by U.S. forces in April, nearly two decades after being convicted in absentia by an Italian court and sentenced to life in prison for the hijacking.
A statement from the U.S.-led coalition did not elaborate on the cause of death. There was an attempt to revive the 56-year-old Abbas, it said.
Abbas' small Palestine Liberation Front commandeered the Italian cruise ship, demanded the release of 50 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and threw an elderly Jewish American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer, overboard after shooting him.
Meanwhile, Iraqi police arrested a prominent member in the northern Iraq-based militant group Ansar al-Islam, an Iraqi Kurd known as Ayoub al-Afghani, in Baghdad late Tuesday and handed him over to coalition forces, a Kurdish security official in Kirkuk said.
Also, the former head of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party in the town of Tarmiya, northwest of Baghdad, surrendered to U.S. troops Tuesday, O'Brien said. He did not comment on whether the official, Waleed al-Ayeesh, was suspected of involvement in anti-U.S. violence.
In Baqouba, northwest of Baghdad, a bomb went off near the offices of Iraq's largest Shiite party, wounding two people, said party spokesman Haithem al-Husseini.
Al-Husseini, of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, blamed the attack on former Saddam loyalists and terrorists "trying to spread chaos in the country."
The Baqouba bombing came a day after Shiite leaders criticized Iraq's interim constitution, clouding national unity ahead of the planned June 30 turnover of power by the coalition to Iraq.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the most influential cleric to Iraq's Shiite majority, initiated the latest episode of political wrangling. His objections to the interim charter prompted his supporters on the 25-seat Governing Council to refuse to sign the document Friday.
Citing a pressing need to safeguard national unity and push forward the political process, al-Sistani's supporters signed the constitution Monday, but made clear their reservations about parts of the document and their wish to change them.
On Tuesday, another grand ayatollah, Mohammed Taqi al-Modaresi, warned of civil war or dismemberment of Iraq because of the charter's adoption of a federal government system. SCIRI's leader, Governing Council member Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, said the document encroached on the powers of a future parliament.