3 Quit Haiti Government; Police Fire on Protesters

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti â€”  Three members of Haiti’s provisional government resigned today following a transportation strike, and police fired on protesters disrupting traffic with flower planters in the capital’s main boulevard.

There were no reports of injuries.

The government’s Radio National announced the resignations of Alix Cineas, and army colonels Max Valls and Prosper Avril from what had been a six-man, civilian-military National Government Council. Another council member, Gerard Gourgue, who also served as minister of justice, resigned Thursday.

The radio report gave no reason for the resignations and there was no immediate comment from the departing council members.

The radio announcement said the council was left in the hands of two soldiers, Gen. Henri Namphy, council president, Col. William Regala, and Jacques A. Francois, the minister of foreign affairs.

The council was formed to replace President Jean-Claude Duvalier when he fled on Feb. 7 to exile in France.

Demands from the public that Avril and Cineas resign began in the first days after the council took power. Both men were close to the authoritarian Duvalier family regime that ruled this Caribbean republic for 28 years.

3,000 Protesters March

Radio Soleil, the Roman Catholic Church station that broadcasts in Creole, reported at 4 p.m. that 3,000 protesters were marching peacefully in Jacmel, a southern coast resort area of 10,000 to 15,000 people. The protesters were demanding the three remaining members of the governing council be replaced by a civilian interim government.

It was quiet, but tense in the capital as dusk fell.

Earlier in the day, a taxi drivers’ strike was augmented by small bands of protesters who shoved large concrete flower planters onto Jean-Jacques Dessalines Boulevard at noon, causing a major traffic snarl on the business district’s main boulevard.

Blue-uniformed police fired shots to disperse the demonstrators and cleared the street.

The taxi drivers were protesting the death of five people killed when soldiers fired into an angry crowd Wednesday afternoon.

Drivers of the city’s 600 colorful “tap tap� taxis stayed off the streets for the second consecutive day today to protest the action taken by an off-duty army captain, who attempted to arrest a bus driver Wednesday afternoon after the driver allegedly cut him off in traffic.

The captain, run off by protesting bystanders, returned with two truckloads of soldiers. When the protesters began throwing rocks and shouting, the soldiers fired into the crowd, killing five people and injuring 10, witnesses said.