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HAITI: OPPOSITION SAYS GOVERNMENT FAKED ATTACK ON NATIONAL PALACE FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES.

Article Excerpt
Police thwarted an attempt by a band of heavily armed men to take over the Haitian National Palace Dec. 17. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide says the attack was a failed coup attempt, but opposition leaders called the government's version absurd. Guy Philippe, a former police official whom the government has implicated in the alleged plot, is being detained in the Dominican Republic.

In October 2000, the government accused Philippe and several other former police officers of an attempt to overthrow the government of then President Rene Preval (1996-2001). Gerard Pierre Charles, secretary-general of the opposition party Organisation de Peuple en Lutte (OPL), said the coup report was invented by the governing Fanmi Lavalas party. Dominican authorities refused to return several of the alleged conspirators who had taken refuge in that neighboring country (see NotiCen, 2000-10-26).

In the Dec. 17 incident, police said 33 armed men attacked the National Palace and took over a wing of the building containing the communications center. A government spokesperson said the attackers were dressed in the same kind of military fatigues worn by the army that Aristide disbanded in 1995.

Two police officers and two bystanders were killed in...