Insurgent groups headed by Guy Philippe who took arms against former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide entered Monday the country's capital, Port-au-Prince, reports reaching Havana said.  

They paraded across the city in trucks and stopped in several abandoned police stations.

Accompanied by 50 heavily armed men wearing military helmets, Philippe moved in a caravan of vehicles around Petionville, a neighborhood in the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.

The rebels told the press that just as Philippe had promised, they would not go to the Presidential Palace, headquarters of the new government chaired by the former judge of the Supreme Court Boniface Alexander.

The insurgent leader said his forces would cease fighting as they awaited the arrival of an international peace force and asserted to back the interim government that replaced Aristide on Sunday.

The US marines arrived in Haiti early on Monday as an advance of the multinational force and were deployed in the streets of Port-au-Prince.

US President George W. Bush assured that the troops' main objective was to avoid a power struggle among rebel groups and to restore order. The chief of the US contingent David Berger added their first priority was to keep the capital's international airport open.

Of the 8 million Haitian inhabitants, 2 million live in Port-au-Prince, currently dominated by chaos, civil disobedience and political violence as it was plagued by flocks of dangerous prisoners set free.

Aristide resigned Sunday under mounting pressure from foreign nations, rebels and political opponents and went into exile after a two-week rebellion that has wrecked the Caribbean nation.

(Xinhua News Agency March 2, 2004)