Haiti PM ousted by militant coup

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Haiti's premier said his country was in the throes of a coup and appealed Tuesday for international help -- even as Washington and Paris stated reluctance to use force to stop the bloody uprising.\nPrime Minister Yvon Neptune made his plea a day after former soldiers joined the rebellion, seizing the key central city of Hinche, burning the police station, freeing prisoners -- and increasing the potential for a full-scale civil war.\nRebels also control most roads leading in and out of the Artibonite, home to almost 1 million people, and have isolated the north by chasing police from a dozen towns. At least 56 people have been killed.\n"We are witnessing the coup d'etat machine in motion," Neptune told reporters. He said Haiti's 5,000-member police force is ill-equipped to respond and that he expects the international community "to show that it really wants peace and stability in Haiti."\nHe refused to say if that meant a military intervention, and President Jean-Bertrand Aristide said Monday he had asked the Organization of American States only for "technical assistance."\nStill, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday that "there is frankly no enthusiasm right now for sending in military or police forces to put down the violence that we are seeing."\nPowell, speaking on CNN, said the international community wants to see "a political solution" and only then would willing nations offer a police presence to implement such an agreement.\nIn Paris, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin called an emergency meeting Tuesday to weigh the risks of sending peacekeepers and how otherwise to help the impoverished island -- a former colony that is home to 2,000 French citizens.\n"Can we deploy a peacekeeping force?" he asked on France-Inter radio, noting it "is very difficult" when a nation is in the midst of violence.\n"We are in contact with all of our partners in the framework of the United Nations, which has sent a humanitarian mission to Haiti to see what is possible."\nThe United States has staged three military interventions in Haiti, the last in 1994 when it sent 20,000 troops to end a military dictatorship that had ousted Aristide and halt an influx of Haitian boat people to Florida.