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Bush: U.S. will turn back Haitian refugees
(CNN) --With violence escalating in Haiti, President Bush said Wednesday the United States will turn back refugees who try to escape from the Caribbean nation, while the U.N. Security Council said it will hold an urgent meeting Thursday on the crisis.
The president said he ordered the Coast Guard to maintain a "robust presence" along the U.S. coast watching for Haitian refugees.
Bush encouraged the international community to provide a security presence in Haiti, adding that the first step to peace is to obtain a political solution to the crisis by all parties coming to the table immediately.
The United Nations is calling for an immediate halt to the violence and to human rights abuses on both sides.
The Security Council said Wednesday it will hold a session on the Haiti crisis at the request of Jamaica and other nearby countries.
The council has heard from a senior U.N. official on the humanitarian problems in Haiti. U.N. diplomats have expressed concern about the country, but so far the council has not discussed any peacekeeping force.
Also Wednesday, Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide called for urgent international to help avoid more bloodshed as rebel forces threaten the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Armed with pistols and old rifles, Aristide supporters built makeshift barricades on the main road leading into the capital.
While residents and officials alike waited to see if rebels would make good on their vows to march to Port-au-Prince and forcibly remove the president, opposition political leaders have rejected an international power-sharing plan aimed at appeasing the rebels.
They planned to meet Wednesday to draw up a counterproposal and decide their next steps.
Opposition spokesman Charles Baker praised international peace efforts but restated Wednesday that Aristide remains the source of the problem.
Criminal behavior and corruption by the president's regime justifies his ouster, Baker said.
He called for an urgent political solution to what he called "a situation that is worsening" in the streets.
The heavily armed rebels are led by former members of Haiti's now-disbanded army. In Cap Haitien, they seized the international airport, torched the police station, released prisoners and broke into an arms depot.
An undetermined number of people were killed, witnesses said.
Diplomatic maneuvers under way
The Rev. Al Sharpton, the Democratic presidential hopeful and civil rights activist, said Tuesday he plans to travel to Haiti in an attempt to act as a broker between Aristide and his political opponents.
In other diplomatic maneuvers, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell phoned French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin on Tuesday to support a French proposal to bring the parties to Paris for talks, a State Department official said.
The official said the United States urged the parties to take advantage of the offer and reiterated there was no discusssion about military intervention to end the violence.
World Food Program officials said looting has become widespread in the rebel-held north, including a grain warehouse robbed of enough supplies to feed nearly 300,000 people.
Anticipating violence if political opposition leaders rejected the power-sharing proposal -- or if the rebels storm Port-au-Prince under any circumstances -- the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders have begun to send aid workers to the small nation on the western end of the island of Hispaniola.
Aristide has faced criticism since an election in 2000 that observers called fraudulent. Opposition parties accuse his supporters of using violence to intimidate them. He has said repeatedly that he will not willingly step aside until his term of office expires in 2006.
Nearly 40,000 Haitians fled the country after a 1991 coup that ousted Aristide, who was restored to power in 1994 amid the threat of U.S. military intervention.