Rock-throwing supporters of Aristide stop marchers

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Militants crushed a rally against Haiti's president before it began on Thursday, setting up flaming barricades along the route of a protest march and hurling stones as demonstrators tried to gather in the capital.

Opposition leaders accused President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of orchestrating the suppression, but the United States said it was standing by him as he confronts an armed rebellion affecting a dozen provincial towns.

"The policy of the administration is not regime change," Secretary of State Colin Powell told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "President Aristide is the elected president of Haiti."

A week of violence has killed 49 people and blocked food and fuel supplies to northern Haiti.

In the capital Port-au-Prince, which is in the south and has not been affected by the uprising, about 100 Aristide supporters began lobbing rocks as protesters tried to gather. Protest organizers said one person was hit by a bullet and three were injured by rocks.

Associated Press Television News footage showed Aristide loyalists chasing an opponent and stoning him as he fled, stumbled and fell. His condition was unknown.

An Aristide partisan pulled a gun on a U.S. Embassy security officer observing Thursday's events from a diplomatic vehicle, which then sped away, witnesses said.

Police retreated to their station when the protesters were attacked, offering no protection.

Critics at home and abroad, including the U.S. government, have accused Aristide of blocking similar demonstrations by allowing police and supporters to attack opponents -- charges the Haitian president denies.

"Aristide has confirmed he is a delinquent outlaw president," one opposition leader, Evans Paul, told reporters.

Aristide militants said they were protecting the police station from the anti-Aristide protesters.

"We came to stop these terrorists," said Bernabe Mervil, 33.

More than a dozen police stations have been torched in the revolt. The stations are targeted because they symbolize Aristide's authority and because police are accused of attacking Aristide opponents and extorting money.

The broad-based coalition that called Thursday's march has distanced itself from the bloody uprising, which is led by a former criminal gang and disgruntled ex-soldiers of the disbanded army.

But Aristide accused his political opponents of driving the revolt.

The rebellion started last week in Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city with 200,000 people.

It remained in rebel hands Thursday. Dogs chewed on the charred remains of an alleged Aristide hit man who rebels killed by "necklacing" -- putting a tire doused in gasoline over his head and setting him aflame.

It's a form of assassination Aristide encouraged during the uprising that ended the 29-year Duvalier family dictatorship in 1989.

Rebels in Gonaives say they were armed by Aristide's party to terrorize his opponents in the city. But many who once pledged allegiance to Aristide have turned their backs on him as poverty has persisted and international donors have frozen millions of dollars in aid over flawed 2000 legislative elections.

On Thursday, panicked residents of Gonaives ran through streets screaming that police were launching a counterattack from a boat.

Gunmen yelling "Freedom or death!" rushed to the port and trained their weapons on an approaching vessel, which retreated. It was too far away to see if it held police.

One rebel leader, Winter Etienne, said they were taking their battle to other cities.

"We already have a force hiding in St. Marc, and we also have one hiding in Cap-Haitien. They are awaiting the orders to attack," Etienne said Wednesday.

But it appeared police backed by gunmen loyal to Aristide have reinforced their control in St. Marc, an important port 45 miles west of the capital.

Indicating most rebels have fled the city, rebel leader Charles Nord Thompson told Radio Vision 2000 on Thursday morning that he could account for only 10 of some 100 members who seized St. Marc on Saturday.

On Wednesday, witnesses said, police entered the St. Marc slum where rebels were holed up, shooting to provide cover for Aristide militants who then set ablaze five houses and fired at fleeing residents.

Reporters saw the charred remains of one person, and the bodies of three people apparently shot in the back.

There were also reprisal attacks in Haiti's second city, the northern port of Cap-Haitien, where Aristide supporters were manning barricades to block any rebel incursion. The house of a reporter for opposition Radio Maxima was burned overnight, witnesses said.

Haiti has suffered 32 coups in 200 years, the last in 1991 when Aristide was ousted eight months after he became the Caribbean nation's first freely elected leader. President Bill Clinton sent 20,000 U.S. troops in 1994 to end brutal military rule, restore Aristide and halt an exodus of Haitian boat people to Florida.