Troops From Strongest Rebel Battalion Surrender After 2-Day Fight, Haiti Says

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti —  Rebel troops of the most formidable of Haiti’s two mutinying army battalions surrendered Saturday after a second day of intense fighting in downtown Port-au-Prince, according to an army headquarters communique broadcast by the state-run National Radio.

The government announcement linked the rebels to drug traffickers and a prominent former Cabinet minister under Haitian dictator Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier, who fled the country in 1986.

In an hours-long crescendo of artillery, grenade and machine-gun fire that rattled the capital city, better-armed soldiers of the elite Presidential Guards rooted out pockets of rebel soldiers in four downtown areas and occupied the barracks of the mutinying Dessalines Battalion, which they had partly stormed the night before.

There were no reliable reports on the number of dead and injured, but hospitals said there appeared to be fewer casualties than expected, considering the intensity of the gunfire. At least three civilians died in the cross-fire or from stray mortar explosions, witnesses said.

The U.S. Embassy said that the United States had responded to an urgent request from the Haitian government for medical assistance.

The victory temporarily boosted the beleaguered government of Haiti’s military president, Lt. Gen. Prosper Avril, who survived an attempted coup d’etat last Sunday, only to become embroiled in turmoil when two of the army’s three combat units mutinied and tried to force his resignation.

Members of the second rebel battalion, the Leopards, were reported by a senior government official to have abandoned their camp at Freres, about five miles from the capital of Port-au-Prince, and taken to the streets of the nearby suburb of Petionville. A Haitian military specialist said that there have been numerous desertions from the 600-member unit and that it is too disorganized to do more than join the surrender if Avril’s loyal Presidential Guards can round up its roaming troopers.

Speaking of Avril’s chances for restoring order and proceeding toward long-sought democratic stability in Haiti, U.S. Ambassador Brunson McKinley said, “I think this time around it might work.”

‘Best Chance for Reform’

U.S. officials have called Avril “the best and perhaps the last real chance for democratic reform in Haiti for the foreseeable future.”

The army headquarters communique said: “Most of the rebel soldiers (of the Dessalines Battalion) were taken prisoner. Others fled, leaving their uniforms and weapons behind.

“The first statements of the arrested rebel soldiers confirm that their plot was concocted from outside by Roger Lafontant and assisted by sectors linked to drug trafficking,” the communique added.

Lafontant, a non-practicing physician who was a Cabinet minister under the Duvalier dictatorship, leads a group of Haitian exiles in the Dominican Republic who have been seeking a foothold on power, according to U.S. and other diplomats here.

Although named on the State Department’s “watch list” as too undesirable to merit a U.S. visa, Lafontant was mistakenly granted one last month, according to the embassy, and visited Washington.

Resulting publicity in the Haitian exile press aroused fears that Washington had cooled in its support of Avril and was talking to Lafontant. “Actually, no official talked to him and his visa was canceled as soon as the mistake was discovered,” a U.S. envoy said.

In a separate statement early Saturday, the Avril government said that it had asked the Dominican Republic to expel Lafontant.

The rebel Dessalines Battalion that surrendered Saturday is Haiti’s most notorious military unit. Its former commander, Col. Jean-Claude Paul, was under indictment in the United States for drug trafficking before his mysterious death from poisoned pumpkin soup last fall.

Under Paul, the unit also was believed to have been involved in the massacre of voters on Nov. 29, 1987, when the country’s only attempt at free and fair elections was canceled by the bloodshed.

Paul’s former deputy commander, Lt. Col. Guy Francois, replaced him. Even though he was one of the four officers involved in last Sunday’s attempted coup, Francois remained in command until his barracks was assaulted by the Presidential Guards on Friday.

A Haitian military specialist said that Francois fled in civilian clothes to a sanctuary in the Vatican’s diplomatic mission here before his barracks surrendered. The other three officers accused in the coup attempt were sent into exile by Avril last Monday and are in the hands of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in New York seeking political asylum.