UN appeals for safe passage of aid in Haiti

The United Nations appealed on Friday to the Haitian government and rebels who have staged a week-long revolt to guarantee safe passage to food and medicine deliveries to avert a humanitarian disaster.

UN officials said more than 200,000 people in the impoverished Caribbean country, already dependent on aid, were in danger of going hungry after an armed gang opposed to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide seized the city of Gonaives and cut off the north.

Hospitals that were short of medicines and blood plasma had run out of medical supplies, as demand for them increased because of the fighting between the rebels and militant government supporters.

"The problem is that before the crisis, Haiti was already in crisis," Gerard Gomez, the Americas and Caribbean regional disaster response adviser for the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told Reuters.

In Washington, US Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Haiti's opposition against ousting Aristide, who was restored to power a decade ago by a US invasion.

"We will accept no outcome that in any way illegally attempts to remove the elected president of Haiti," Powell told reporters after hosting a crisis meeting with mediators.

He also said the United States, Canada and Caribbean nations were discussing whether foreigners could be sent to bolster Haiti's police force. But Powell said there was no plan at this point for military intervention to quell the violence.

UN country coordinator Adama Guindo said in Port-au-Prince that the agency was chartering a barge to ship 1,000 tonnes of cereals to the northern city of Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest, and would ask local authorities there to ensure the safety of food distribution to remote areas.

It was also appealing for safe passage from rebels in Gonaives, where the revolt began on February 5 when an armed gang once aligned to Aristide drove police out.

Up to 50 people have been killed in the rebellion against Aristide, which capped months of anti-government demonstrations and three years of political tensions dating from contested parliamentary elections in 2000.

Considered a champion of democracy when he became Haiti's first elected leader in 1990, Aristide has seen his once overwhelming popularity fade amid accusations of corruption, political violence and civil rights abuses.

The revolt spread to several towns, where police stations were attacked and ports and warehouses were looted, but reached an uneasy stalemate as armed government supporters joined police in hunting down rebels and torching the homes and businesses of opponents.

Prime Minister Yvon Neptune said on Friday that between seven and 10 Aristide loyalists had been arrested for violently preventing a peaceful opposition protest in Port-au-Prince the day before.

Gomez, part of a multi-agency UN team sent to Haiti to evaluate humanitarian needs, said it was difficult to pin down the real extent of hardship and human rights violations because of a lack of reliable information and access to cut-off areas.

The security of aid programmes was a problem even before the current fighting in the poorest country in the Americas, where a third of the eight million population suffers chronic malnutrition and average wages barely exceed $1 a day.

Guy Gauvreau of the Rome-based World Food Programme said eight truck convoys had been hijacked and 60 tonnes of food looted in the past four months.

The UN agency provides food relief to 268,000 people, including 90,000 school children, in the north, where drought followed by floods has led to food shortages. An additional 77,000 poor people around Port-au-Prince depend on handouts.