One killed in pro-Aristide demonstration in Haiti

Waving flags and carrying umbrellas bearing Aristide's smiling face, the demonstrators marched from the pro-Aristide stronghold of Belair toward the National Palace, just blocks away from a cathedral where interim President Boniface Alexandre was attending a Mass.

As the protestors neared the cathedral, riot police fired tear gas and then warning shots to disperse the crowd, which reacted by pelting government vehicles with rocks.

Demonstrator Titus Simpton, 23, was shot and killed. It was unclear who fired the fatal shot, and police were not immediately available for comment.

Aristide claims that the United States forced him to resign amid a spreading three-week revolt on February 29, a claim the United States denies.

The 15-nation Caribbean Community, which has refused to recognise Haiti's interim government, has asked the Organisation of American States (OAS) to investigate Aristide's departure.

Assistant Secretary-General Colin Granderson said yesterday the group asked the 34-nation Washington, DC-based OAS last week, following a decision by Caribbean leaders at a summit in Antigua. The Permanent Council of the OAS is set to meet in Washington on Friday.

"The matter is now in the hands of the OAS and it is up to the Permanent Council to determine how it is going to be done," Granderson told The Associated Press.

Aristide is in Jamaica with his wife and two daughters but is expected to arrive soon in South Africa, where he has been given temporary asylum. He fled Haiti for the Central African Republic, a country that he left about two weeks after his arrival.

Leaders of the Caribbean Community, based in Guyana, wanted an investigation into his departure conducted by the UN Security Council, but they dropped the request on the assumption that France and the United States would use their veto powers to halt such an inquiry.

"We demand that Aristide return!" said Natjoska Jean-Baptiste, a resident of Belair who says the neighbourhood has suffered since Aristide left.

Yesterday's demonstration was pegged to Flag Day, which marks May 18, 1803, when rebel leaders meeting in coastal Arcahaie chose Jean-Jacques Dessalines to succeed their former leader, Toussaint Louverture, who had died a month earlier in a French dungeon.

Dessalines became angered at a French flag draped across the conference table, ripped the white strip from the flag's centre and stomped it on the ground. The white was said to have symbolised the white colonialists who controlled Haiti for decades.

The red and blue strips were later stitched together by Dessaline's wife's goddaughter, Catherine Flon, creating the blue and red banner of today.

Before he was assassinated in 1906, Dessalines substituted a black band for the blue to symbolise the unity between Haiti's black masses and light-skinned elite. His successor, Alexandre Petion, restored the blue which remained until 1966, when dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier returned to the red-and-black design.

When a popular uprising forced his son Jean-Claude Duvalier into exile 20 years later, the traditional red-and-blue flag was rehabilitated.

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