Alexandre, Haiti's president, takes office

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- President Boniface Alexandre officially assumed office in this still-unsettled nation yesterday, while demonstrators outside his new office vowed they would die to restore exiled leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.

A day after a bloody shoot-out that killed seven people in an otherwise peaceful, anti-Aristide march, US Marines acknowledged that they shot and killed one alleged gunman and wounded another. The shootings mark the first time US troops have hurt or killed someone during their 10-day presence as peace-enforcers in Haiti. Aristide, who fled the country in late February under immense political pressure from the United States and a looming security threat from armed rebels making their way to the capital from the north, yesterday denounced what he called his "abduction" from his troubled nation. "I am the elected president and I remain the elected president," Aristide told reporters in his first public appearance since his exile to the Central African Republic. He appealed to his supporters to counter what he called the "occupation" of Haiti by foreign troops.

The State Department warned Aristide not to try to return. "If Mr. Aristide really wants to serve his country, he really has to, we think, let his nation get on with the future and not try to stir up the past again," said spokesman Richard Boucher.

Haitians still expressed fear yesterday after a Sunday demonstration turned from a celebratory march to a violent attack from gunmen witnesses said were perched alongside the route of the massive rally. Locals believe the shooters -- who killed six people, including a foreign journalist, and wounded more than 30 -- were members of the "chimeres," an armed gang sympathetic to Aristide.

The downtown streets yesterday were unusually quiet, and locals who did venture outside questioned the ability of the US and French troops who make up the bulk of the multinational forces here to maintain security in post-Aristide Haiti.

Some residents said they wanted to bring back insurgency leader Guy Philippe, who pledged to US forces he would lay down his arms now that Aristide was gone. And many believe that both the foreign troops and domestic police on Sunday failed a test of their will and ability to control political or gang violence here.

"The people trusted the American forces that were supposed to protect the demonstrators. If the foreign forces cannot assure security, let the armed forces from the north come and give us security," said Lemoine Belizaire, 45, who had marched in the anti-Aristide rally Sunday.

"Force? What force? They just came for the sun, to wander around," said a female anti-Aristide demonstrator who would not give her name.

Colonel Mark Gurganus, commander of the US forces here, defended the behavior Sunday of his troops, who locals complained responded too late and with too little force to stop what became Haiti's worst single day of violence since Aristide left power.

"I don't have enough people to do everything," Gurganus said of the more than 1,600-member multinational force. "As for the people getting killed every day, that's been going on long before we got here," Gurganus added.

While the colonel spoke, hundreds of looters just blocks away ransacked an industrial park, one of the last places in Port-au-Prince where there were still goods to steal. Some looters menaced drivers on the way to the airport, threatening them with machetes, and a group attempted to pull one journalist out of his car.

Gurganus, told of the activity by reporters who had witnessed it minutes before, said he did not see any need to respond. "If I reacted to every report of looting and violence in the city, I would have Marines in front of every house. And I can't do that," he said.

Haiti's political transition is proceeding, with the swearing-in of Alexandre and the work of a seven-member Council of Sages, which is expected to name a new prime minister as early as today.

But the security situation is tenuous. Even as Alexandre delivered his first address yesterday as president, about 2,000 pro-Aristide demonstrators converged angrily in front of the palace. "Aristide or death!" the protesters shouted. Diplomats who were on the scene to welcome Alexandre as president watched from the palace steps, behind US Marines who pointed their guns toward the crowd but did not fire.

Guns are common on the streets, and neither US military officers nor Haitian police have announced a plan to disarm either the "chimeres" or Philippe's rebels.

A United Nations team is expected to arrive today to assess the size and composition of a peacekeeping mission in Haiti, diplomats said yesterday.

US military officials say they are not on a policing mission, and are here only to help Haiti's national police in their efforts to maintain law and order.

But the ability of the police to do the job is uncertain. Gurganus said he didn't know how many police are actually on the streets, and both police officials and Haitian citizens worry about militants who pretend to be police.

Leon Charles, the newly named chief of police, acknowledged in an interview yesterday that his men had made a mistake in leaving the march route before the crowd had dispersed. The three series of shots came just as one group of marchers was leaving and another one was approaching the palace.

"We declared victory too soon," Charles said. He added that he had perhaps 3,500 officers he could count on -- a number he said was inadequate -- and that those men themselves did not have the weapons or vehicles they needed.