WASHINGTON: After three years of malign neglect, the administration of President George W. Bush is scrambling to come up with a coherent policy to halt rising violence and chaos in Haiti that could still provoke a major exodus of desperate boat people seeking refuge in Florida.

With rebel gangs holding Haiti's fourth largest city, Gonaives, and the Central Plateau town of Hinche, and vowing to move on Cap Haitien, the country's second largest city, analysts here believe the country could be moving towards total breakdown, or civil war.

Moreover, both President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his civil opposition, the Group of 184, appear as inflexible as ever about negotiating a political settlement.

Such a pact is seen as indispensable to the administration's agreeing to participate in an international military or police force to restore order to the Caribbean nation, which, ironically, is marking its bicentennial as an independent nation this year.

The point man on US Haiti policy at the moment is Secretary of State Colin Powell who for the first time suggested on Thursday that Washington would not oppose an agreement between Aristide and the civil opposition that included his departure from office before his term ends in February 2006.

As the crisis grew over recent weeks, Powell had insisted that Aristide should be permitted to complete his term provided that he agreed to reforms that would ensure a stronger voice in the government for the opposition.

"He is the president for some time to come yet," Powell, who played a role in Aristide's restoration to the presidency 10 years ago, said in a radio interview on Thursday. "You know, if an agreement is reached that moves that in another direction, that's fine," he added.

Aristide was quick to respond, declaring several hours later at a ceremony honouring police who have been slain in the gang uprising, that he has no intention of leaving. "I am ready to give my life if that is what it takes to defend my country," he said.

While his rhetoric appeared calculated to appeal to Haiti's nationalist sentiments, the stakes Aristide spoke of have probably become more compelling over the last several days as former chiefs of a notorious death squad have emerged as leaders of the uprisings.

Amnesty International on Wednesday denounced the presence in Hinche at the head of rebels forces there of Louis Jodel Chamblain, the former leader of the paramilitary Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), which carried out a reign of terror that took the lives of many hundreds of suspected Aristide activists during military rule between 1990 and 1994, when a US-led intervention restored Aristide to power.

Chamblain, who apparently slipped across the border from the Dominican Republic where he had been in exile for almost a decade, was convicted in absentia of involvement in the assassination of Antoine Izmery, a prominent pro-democracy activist.

Reports from Hinche indicated Chamblain is accompanied by Guy Philippe, Cap Haitien's police chief, and Jean Pierre Baptiste, alias "Jean Tatoune", who was sentenced to life imprisonment for his participation in a 1994 massacre that killed dozens of people in the Raboteau district of Gonaives.

Chamblain's forces are said to be far better equipped with trucks and machine guns and other weapons than the beleaguered 4,000-man Haitian police force, according to reports from Haiti. Aristide abolished the army in 1995.

"As rebel forces, under leadership of convicted perpetrators of human rights violations, expand their control in the centre and north of the country, and the population of conflicted areas is cut off from supplies of food and medicines, fears of a mass population outflow from Haiti are bound to increase," Amnesty said on Wednesday in a warning that must have sounded particularly ominous to Bush's re-election campaign team.

Indeed, predictions by Florida's two opposition Democratic senators Wednesday that Bush's failure to take a leadership role in resolving the crisis risked a major refugee crisis, similar to what Florida faced 10 years ago during military rule, appeared to galvanize the administration.

It had previously indicated it wanted the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Organization of American States (OAS) to take the lead, and had rebuffed the idea of sending US troops or police to Haiti, even as part of an international force.

In meetings in Kingston with CARICOM leaders at the end of January, Aristide agreed to implement a series of steps as part of a political settlement with the opposition, including the reform and depoliticization of the Haitian police force, the appointment of a prime minister acceptable to the opposition, new parliamentary elections, and the disarmament of pro-Aristide gangs.

But the opposition greeted Aristide's return with renewed demands that he step down immediately. Several days later, the "Artibonite Resistance Front", a gang that had been previously allied with Aristide, took over Gonaives, launching the insurgency.

Powell is now suggesting that Washington is actively lining up what he called a "solid consensus" with France, Canada, CARICOM and OAS leaders on the possible constitution of an international force that would oversee any agreement between the civic opposition and Aristide.

But the problem, according to Jocelyn McCalla, director of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights, is to work out such a deal, particularly given the growing chaos and the failure of the opposition to compromise on its demand for Aristide to resign. -Dawn/The Inter Press News Service.