U.S. and international officials face a difficult choice of whether to protect Aristide's rule if a peace plan falters.

BY FRANK DAVIES AND JACQUELINE CHARLES

WASHINGTON - The worsening crisis in Haiti has placed U.S. officials and the international community in a serious bind: Can they protect President Jean-Bertrand Aristide if efforts at a peace plan are overwhelmed by violence? And do they have the will to do it?

Secretary of State Colin Powell and top diplomats for the Organization of American States and the Caribbean Community scrambled Monday to persuade opposition leaders to agree to a plan designed to force Aristide to share power with his opposition but leave him in power.

Aristide said over the weekend he would accept the plan.

But if the opposition does not agree, and rebels take over more of Haiti and threaten the capital, several diplomats said Monday there is no real ''Plan B'' to fall back on.

If the peace plan fails, ''it would certainly mean the major collective effort employed so far would have to be revisited,'' said Sandra Honoré, chief of staff to the assistant secretary general of the OAS.

White House and State Department officials said they were still seeking a political settlement and were not considering an armed intervention, even as Aristide's hold on power weakened.

''Our focus right now is on working with nations in the Caribbean and OAS, and France and Canada and others, to bring about a peaceful resolution in Haiti,'' said Scott McClellan, White House spokesman.

FEW OPTIONS

But such assurances were in danger of being overtaken by events in Haiti. Close observers of the crisis said U.S. and other officials are running out of options if Aristide -- a popularly elected leader -- is about to be forced from power.

''The United States now has to figure out whether it's going to push Aristide out or say we are going to preserve his rule as much as possible and help him face down the rebels,'' said Jocelyn McCalla, executive director of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights in New York.

''The United States is between a rock and a hard place,'' McCalla said. ``It waited too long to consider these options.''

One Republican senator who has followed Haiti closely, Mike DeWine of Ohio, warned in a speech that ''it's certainly not out of the realm of possibility that there will be a bloodbath in Port-au-Prince'' if the peace plan fails.

'ON THE SPOT'

James Dobbins, who was special envoy to Haiti after U.S. forces reinstated Aristide in 1994, agreed that the Bush administration ``is really on the spot.''

''They're going to have to decide whether to let the situation deteriorate further or step in, and there's a lot of ambivalence about that,'' said Dobbins, a national security analyst at the RAND Corp.

If Haiti descends into civil war and Aristide is ousted, Dobbins fears a humanitarian crisis, with food supplies shut off, and the return of ex-military and paramilitary leaders ``with a history of criminality.''

A few hundred well-armed police officers from France or Canada with U.S. support would help stabilize the situation and buy time for political negotiation, Dobbins said.

Jean-Germain Gros, a political science professor at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, said that because the Bush administration is hostile to Aristide -- blaming him for much of the crisis -- there is little will to try to save him.

''Once again, Haiti finds itself caught in the vortex of U.S. politics,'' Gros said. ``The Republicans never liked Aristide and I don't think anybody would cry about his departure. They could save him, but they won't.''