Pro-Aristide militants crush protest

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Militants crushed a rally against Haiti's president before it began Thursday, setting up flaming barricades along the route of a protest march and hurling stones as demonstrators tried to gather in the capital.\nOpposition leaders accused President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of orchestrating the suppression, but the United States said it was standing by him as he confronts an armed rebellion affecting a dozen provincial towns.\n"The policy of the administration is not regime change," Secretary of State Colin Powell told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "President Aristide is the elected president of Haiti."\nA week of violence has killed 49 people and blocked food and fuel supplies to northern Haiti.\nIn the capital, Port-au-Prince, which is in the south and has not been affected by the uprising, about 100 Aristide supporters began lobbing rocks as protesters tried to gather. Protest organizers said one person was hit by a bullet, and three were injured by rocks.\nAssociated Press Television News footage showed Aristide loyalists chasing an opponent and stoning him as he fled, stumbled and fell. His condition was unknown.\nAn Aristide partisan pulled a gun on a U.S. Embassy security officer observing Thursday's events from a diplomatic vehicle, which then sped away, witnesses said.\nPolice retreated to their station when the protesters were attacked, offering no protection.\nCritics at home and abroad, including the U.S. government, have accused Aristide of blocking similar demonstrations by allowing police and supporters to attack opponents -- charges the Haitian president denies.\n"Aristide has confirmed he is a delinquent outlaw president," said Evans Paul, an opposition leader.\nAristide militants said they were protecting the police station from the anti-Aristide protesters.\n"We came to stop these terrorists," said Bernabe Mervil, 33.\nMore than a dozen police stations have been torched in the revolt. The stations are targeted because they symbolize Aristide's authority and because police are accused of attacking Aristide opponents and extorting money.\nThe broad-based coalition that called Thursday's march has distanced itself from the bloody uprising, which is led by a former criminal gang and disgruntled ex-soldiers of the disbanded army.\nBut Aristide accused his political opponents of driving the revolt.\nThe rebellion started last week in Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city with 200,000 people.\nIt remained in rebel hands Thursday. Dogs chewed on the charred remains of an alleged Aristide hit man who rebels killed by "necklacing" (putting a tire doused in gasoline over his head and setting him aflame).\nIt's a form of assassination Aristide encouraged during the uprising that ended the 29-year Duvalier family dictatorship in 1989.