MONTREAL: "Without disarmament, Haiti's democracy will remain at risk," US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on his recent visit to the battered nation , adding, "we call on all armed groups to lay down their weapons and allow the duly constituted authorities to impose the rule of law".

The message did not travel far. Standing next to him at a press conference on April 5 at the Port-au-Prince airport, interim Haitian Prime Minister Gerard Latortue signalled a softer approach: "We are asking that people with armed guns refrain from using them, because you cannot have access to political process nor power through use of guns and/or violence."

Since they flew former Prime Minister Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of the country on Feb 29, in what Aristide calls a kidnapping, US officials have repeatedly pledged to disarm the rebels who led the uprising that ended in his exit, along with other armed criminals and thugs who today wield their weapons freely in most parts of the country outside the capital.

But events on the ground, and even statements from US military officials leading a multinational force in the country of eight million people, belie that promise. They also suggest that neither the new government nor the international powers behind it are seriously interested in disarmament.

"Armed young people in Les Cayes brandish their weapons at the slightest altercation," said a report issued by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Thursday.

"Curfew is still in force from midnight to 5am. Police forces throughout the country are gradually being revised but they are still understaffed." "Due to the state of impunity the number of criminal activities - hold-ups, kidnappings, robberies, rape, summary executions and acts of looting - committed by armed gangs is increasing. Aristide's supporters feel threatened," it added.

Humanitarian groups are slowly resuming their activities throughout the country, said the OCHA report - but aid workers are not the gangs' targets. "Amnesty International (AI) is particularly concerned for the safety of judges, prosecutors, criminal investigators, victims, witnesses and human rights defenders involved in prosecutions relating to past human rights abuses," said the group, reporting on a just ended 15-day mission to Haiti.

"Judge Napela Saintil, the chief judge in the trial of those responsible for the 1994 Raboteau massacre, was severely beaten on March 30 by an armed man. The judge told Amnesty International delegates that his attacker had threatened him for the part he played in the conviction, in absentia, of Louis Jodel Chamblain, one of the participants in the massacre," added the AI statement.

Chamblain emerged earlier this year to join the anti-Aristide uprising led by former police chief Guy Philippe. -Dawn/The Inter Press News Service.