Haiti's Preval is keeping a low profile

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Haiti's president-elect met privately on Friday with political leaders to try and smooth the tensions that followed his turbulent election victory.

But Haiti, and much of the world, waited to hear Rene Preval's plans to form a new government and address violence and poverty in Haiti -- as well as his stance on his former mentor, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former slum priest living in exile after being ousted as president by a violent rebellion two years ago.

A day after Preval was declared the winner of the Feb. 7 elections, he postponed a news conference until Wednesday and remained inside his sister's gated house in the hills east of the capital, where he has been meeting with politicians of various stripes. Among them was Chavannes Jeune, who finished fourth in the election with about 5 percent of the vote.

"Preval has always preached reconciliation," said Preval's campaign manager, Volcy Assad. "It's logical that he's meeting political leaders."

Fritz Longchamp, one of Preval's campaign coordinators, said the president-elect wants to forge a parliamentary coalition.

"He has begun a dialogue with some political leaders," Longchamp said, without elaborating.

Preval was a hair short of an outright majority with more than 90 percent of the vote tabulated.

Haitian officials decided in a meeting Wednesday that ran past midnight to divide the 85,000 blank ballots cast among the candidates in proportion to the percentage they had already received. That gave Preval just over 51 percent and outright victory.

If he had fallen short of a majority, he would have faced a second-round election in March against the second-place finisher, Leslie Manigat.

Chilean Ambassador Marcel Young said his country and Brazil sought to resolve the election dispute with Haitian authorities as the nation teetered on the brink of upheaval. Tens of thousands of Preval supporters had taken to the streets, claiming fraud. Some erected flaming barricades across roads. Shops were closed. Thousands briefly occupied the luxury hotel where election officials announced the latest returns.

"We expressed our worry and I think it produced healthy dialogue and helped lead to a quick solution," Young said, adding that Haitian authorities decided to divide the blank votes among the candidates.

"We were talking with them almost every day because it was an untenable situation," he said. "There was no commerce and things couldn't continue this way ... Our country didn't do anything but facilitate a dialogue."

Manigat, also a former president, has accused election officials of breaking the rules to give Preval a first-round victory.

Charles Henri Baker, the third-place finisher, was also unhappy.

"There was no clear winner in the first round," Baker said. "What happened was that Haiti's future president took hold of the results."

Bob Maguire, director of the international affairs program at Trinity University in Washington, said Preval could be keeping silent because he wants to choose his words carefully.

"This is a very delicate moment and he has to be really careful about what he says, because every word is being parsed like it hasn't been before," Maguire said by phone.

Maryse Narcisse, Aristide's spokeswoman, declined to say whether Aristide and Preval were in contact, saying only that the ousted leader would make a statement next week.

The U.S. government believes the return of Aristide could destabilize the country and has hinted that he should remain in exile in South Africa.

Preval, who led Haiti from 1996 to 2001, became the first elected president ever to finish his term when he left office five years ago.

After he is inaugurated on March 29, he will lead a nation where heavily armed street gangs wage gunfights with U.N. peacekeepers, where the rich and poor are divided by mistrust and hatred and where a rash of kidnappings is driving out business owners.

The son of a former government official, Preval has vowed to crack down on hardened criminals.

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Associated Press writers Stevenson Jacobs, in Port-au-Prince, and Alfred de Montesquiou in San Juan, Puerto Rico contributed to this report.