Aristide Party Emerges from Hiding, Demands Peace

In their first public appearance since Aristide fled into exile just under a month ago, a handful of party leaders said they would continue to work for his return but at the same time try to foster reconciliation and peace.

"We're ready for the peace, we're ready for a democratic country, but we need everybody to disarm," Sorel Francois, a Lavalas Family leader, told Reuters.

"We already put the guns down, we asked all the members of Fanmi Lavalas to put their gun down. But we still see all the terrorists, they still have their gun, they still walking on the street," he said, referring to rebels who helped push Aristide out on Feb. 29.

In a list of demands presented to a news conference, the party called on the U.N.-backed government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue to stop "demonizing" Aristide supporters, and stop arbitrary arrests and killings.

"Mr Latortue has to stop walking arm-in-arm with known criminals that should be in jail," party leader Wilfrid Lavaud said.

They urged the notoriously partisan private media in Haiti to fight intolerance, and said everyone in the country should hand in their guns.

In the slums where Aristide is still seen as a champion of the country's poor, supporters of the former president say they have faced intimidation, raids and killings since he fled abroad.

Lavalas members say they have been unable to meet, or have had to hide from marauding gunmen turning up at their homes. Half a dozen Aristide associates have been detained by police, and some are being held on a coast guard cutter offshore.

Their anger has been fueled by the new government's hesitation in taking away the guns of street gangs and former soldiers who led a month-long revolt that triggered Aristide's fall.

Latortue, 69, a former U.N. bureaucrat picked by a council of prominent Haitians to run the government until new elections, provoked an outcry from rights groups when he applauded the rebels as "freedom fighters" last Saturday.

Lavalas sympathizers said his embrace of the gunmen, some of whom are convicted human rights abusers or suspected drug runners, showed the revolt against Aristide was a "coup" by the country's small elite to rob the poor masses of their vote.

"A prime minister hand-in-hand with a convicted mass murderer and calling him a freedom fighter ... Frankly, it's scary," said Patrick Elie, a former secretary of defense under Aristide.

Francois said the Lavalas Family party would continue to campaign for Aristide's return so that he could finish his second five-year term. At the same time, it would prepare for the next elections.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=4664317