PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP):UN peacekeepers removed barbed-wire barricades around the presidential palace and some businesses reopened yesterday as an uneasy calm settled over Haiti's capital after three days of violence and looting.
Some roadblocks set up by protesters also came down overnight in Port-au-Prince, where President Rene Preval issued a desperate plea Wednesday for a halt to demonstrations over rising food prices that led to looting and clashes with police.
Women strolled through downtown with baskets of food on their head yesterday, but tensions remained high in the lawless Martissant slum, where some shouted threats at passing cars and fresh graffiti said, "Down with Preval!''
No place for agriculture
"Preval is asking us to do agriculture, but in Port-au-Prince there is no place to do agriculture,'' said Cavet Roland, ridiculing the president's proposals.
The unrest began last week in the southern city of Les Cayes, where five people were killed, and it spread to cities across Haiti, the poorest country in the hemisphere. Thousands protested in the capital, home to some two million people, and bands of looters sacked warehouses and terrorised drivers and shopkeepers with rocks.
Soldiers relaxed
After chasing protesters away with tear-gas and rubber bullets earlier this week, United Nations (UN) troops pulled back from the presidential palace and the Jordanian soldiers relaxed yesterday with their helmets off. But UN assault vehicles remained within striking distance.
Many of the protesters have demanded the resignation of the US-backed president, who has been under fire for months over soaring food prices in a country where most people live on less than US$2 a day.
Most of Haiti's 27 senators have called for the resignation of Haitian Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis, Radio Kiskeya reported yesterday. Alexis, the second in command to Preval, survived a no-confidence vote over the Government's handling of the economy in February, but the senators said they would call another censure vote on Saturday.
