About 80 U.S. Peace Corps volunteers have already been pulled out of the countryside and taken to Port-au-Prince for safety
Diplomats will make peace trip
Foreign envoys will go to Haiti this weekend on an emergency mission in hopes of easing the nation's dangerous political turbulence.
From Herald Wire Services
OTTAWA - U.S., French, Canadian and Caribbean envoys will make an emergency visit to Haiti on Saturday to push President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to honor promises of reforms they hope will help end a bloody revolt.
The U.S. State Department urged all private U.S. citizens to leave while commercial flights are still available. About 80 U.S. Peace Corps volunteers have already been pulled out of the countryside and taken to Port-au-Prince for safety, U.S. officials in Haiti said.
The Pentagon's U.S. Southern Command will also send in a team to advise the U.S. Embassy on the security of the mission, its staff and American citizens amid a revolt against Aristide that has left at least 60 people dead.
Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham said Thursday the mission -- which includes the United States, France and Haiti's Caribbean neighbors -- will prod Aristide to keep the promises he made to the Caribbean Community to ease at least the political side of the crisis.
ARISTIDE'S PROMISES
''There are concerns'' that Aristide is not living up to his promises to release political prisoners, appointing a prime minister who would be independent of the presidency, and reforming the police, Graham said.
''There is a time limit,'' he said, without specifying how long. ``It cannot go on forever.''
CARICOM set March 6 as the deadline for the first of its agreements with Aristide. But it was unclear whether Graham was referring to that deadline or reports from France that the French are eager to send a peacekeeping force to Haiti.
Earlier Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States and several other countries were developing a political plan to present to Aristide and the political opposition, which has not taken up arms but is demanding the president's resignation.
''We're doing what we can to put together a political plan that we will offer to President Aristide and also to the political opposition,'' he said, adding: ``And I think if they will both accept this plan and start executing on it, we might find a way through this crisis politically.''
Meanwhile at a ceremony honoring police officers who have been killed during the revolt, Aristide said he would not leave office before his term ends in 2006 and that he was ready to die for his country.
''I am ready to give my life if that is what it takes to defend my country,'' he said. ``If wars are expensive, peace can be even more expensive.''
But the former priest also raised eyebrows with elliptical words that might be construed as ordering the police to cooperate with armed street gangs accused of attacking his opponents.
''I order the police to accompany the people courageously with the constitution as their guide,'' he said. ''When the police are united to the people, they are invincible.'' Aristide became Haiti's first freely elected leader in 1990. He was ousted eight months later and took refuge in the United States, which restored him to power in 1994. He later disbanded the army and was reelected in 2000.
Tensions building since legislative elections in 2000 branded as fraudulent by the opposition erupted into a revolt Feb. 5 with attacks on more than a dozen towns by a former pro-Aristide group that turned against him after one of its leaders was killed.
SECURITY TEAM
Southcom spokesman Steve Lucas said the ''security assessment team'' ordered to Haiti was requested by U.S. Ambassador James Foley as ``the best military advice on the security situation of the embassy and the protection of its American personnel and American citizens in Haiti.''
He declined to provide its size or travel dates because of security considerations, but said it would be fewer than a dozen officers.
A U.S. official in Washington said the U.S. Marine guard at the mission has not been reinforced.
Asked if the Southcom team would also assess the strength of the armed Aristide opposition, Lucas added, ``There are other channels for assessing that.''
The anti-Aristide gunmen have chased police from more than a dozen towns and cities, some in central Haiti but mostly in the north.
Foley issued a formal declaration of a humanitarian disaster in Haiti on Thursday.
