Army Uprising Ended, Haiti Leader Says : Gen. Avril Thanks God for Success; Discipline Problems Linger

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — This country’s military president, Gen. Prosper Avril, declared that the army rebellion against his rule had ended Monday, and he called on political leaders to help him speed the quest for a democratically elected civilian government.

But Avril conceded that he might face lingering problems with one of the two battalions that mutinied after an unsuccessful coup d’etat attempt last week. The status of the Leopards Battalion remained unclear because, while its officers say they have given up the armed rebellion, the unit remains isolated at its base and is not yet clearly under Avril’s control.

“I think that we have passed the difficult point,” Avril told a press conference at the presidential palace. “But we are realists. I am not going to tell you we have finished completely as long as I do not personally put my finger on things to make sure that the troops are under my command and accept the hierarchical authority of the high command of the armed forces correctly.”

Relaxed and Rested

In his first public appearance since the leaders of the unsuccessful coup seized him and almost toppled his government April 2, a relaxed and apparently rested Avril thanked God for what he called the “miracle” of his success against the rebels.

Avril gave an unexpectedly low casualty count of only six killed and 75 wounded in the intense gunfire that shook Port-au-Prince on Friday and Saturday when his loyal Presidential Guards stormed the barracks of the rebellious Dessalines Battalion adjoining the grounds of the palace. Casualty estimates by civilian officials of the Haiti Red Cross and some of the capital city’s hospitals on Sunday had ranged from 30 to more than 40 dead.

The general explained that his guardsmen had orders “to avoid killing 800 of our brothers” and instead fired blank artillery shells and aimed other weapons toward the sea and “not at man-height” to stun the rebels into submission without hurting them.

Many rebel soldiers routed from the Dessalines barracks Saturday night have since reported in to army headquarters and have turned in their weapons, Avril said, adding that there were still many weapons unaccounted for and that it is a matter for concern.

The president said one of the six dead was a civilian and the others were soldiers, but he declined to break the number down between guardsmen and rebels.

Avril said the last threatening resistance of the rebels ended when all but 12 of the 414 men of the mutinous Leopards in suburban Freres submitted to the authority of their officers Sunday.

“That’s a very big improvement because all of the enlisted men were completely spread out and now they accept the authority of their commanding officer,” Avril said. “We are in contact through general headquarters to continue talking to them because our goal is not to send tanks and more than 1,000 men against the Leopards. We want to solve the problem without using the force of the presidential guard.”

Without mentioning supporters of the former Duvalier dictatorship by name, Avril blamed them for fomenting the coup attempt and the week of army rebellion.

“The country has lost a battalion of trained professionals as the result of politicians who only want destruction,” he said in a voice rising in tones of bitterness. He had previously blamed an ex-Duvalier Cabinet minister for plotting with the rebel officers who attempted the coup.

But he called on democratically minded politicians “to help me now to work faster toward elections.”

“We want to implant democracy in the country and don’t want any more 29 Novembers,” said Avril, referring to the massacres of voters by armed thugs and soldiers that aborted the country’s first attempt at democratic elections in 1987.

Avril has been widely criticized for moving too slowly during his six months in power to begin the electoral process. “Every time we say it’s a slow process, people say we want to stay in power,” he complained. “We do not want to stay in power. We want to make something definite for our country.”

He said he could have forestalled much of the criticism by putting a civilian in the president’s chair. “But with my troops of proven fidelity, if I underwent what I did (last week), what would have happened to a civilian president?” he asked rhetorically.

“No!” he cried emphatically. “I want national opinion to choose a president and not a small group--not a little strong group with munitions. That’s what I want to do.”

He called on civilian politicians and the press to “go deep down among the people” and educate them for the expected electoral process. But he declined to specify a time frame for the elections.

“People would say I’m not serious if I would say there is going to be an election on such and such a date,” he said. “I can’t even tell you how tomorrow will be and you ask me when we will have elections.”

American’s Detention Told

In describing his own detention by coup plotters April 2, Avril disclosed the previously unrevealed but brief detention by the rebels of an American woman he did not identify but who apparently was staying as a guest at his home or the home of one of his Cabinet officers. The American Embassy said that it could not legally disclose the woman’s identify.

At Avril’s side when he spoke to reporters stood army Sgt. Major Joseph Hebreux, who led the enlisted men’s coup that put the general in power last Sept. 17. According to military sources, it was Hebreux again who rallied the Presidential Guards to intervene and save Avril from the April 2 coup plotters.

After Avril departed, Foreign Minister Serge Charles told reporters that the government is now “looking for the authors of the rebellion.”