By Peter Slevin and Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writers

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday questioned Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's ability to rule effectively in remarks that aides said were designed to urge Aristide to resign for the good of his country.

Powell stopped short of calling on the embattled Haitian leader to quit. But he made clear that the Bush administration does not believe Aristide can emerge from this crisis and serve successfully to the end of his term in 2006.

"I hope President Aristide will examine his position carefully and judgments will be made as to what is best for the people of Haiti at this most difficult time," Powell said. "He is the democratically elected president, but he has had difficulties in his presidency."

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, compared Aristide's case to the resignations in October of the presidents of Georgia and Bolivia, who left office as protests threatened to overwhelm them. A resignation and an orderly transition, they said, would preserve democratic order.

Aristide repeated his determination to remain in office, telling CNN that to leave early would amount to a coup d'etat.

"We need now to respect the constitutional order," Aristide said, "and I will leave the palace on Feb. 7, 2006, which is good for our democracy."

The political stalemate continued in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, as Caribbean nations appealed to the U.N. Security Council for an "urgent deployment" of international peacekeepers and the U.S. Coast Guard revealed that 546 Haitian refugees had been detained at sea.

Haiti's opposition groups did not budge from their refusal to join a power-sharing arrangement pushed by the United States and other countries and accepted by Aristide. Rebel leaders who control the northern half of the country warned again that they would march on the capital if Aristide remained in power.

The paralysis prompted Powell to try to shake up the situation.

"We're concerned because this kind of tension cannot be maintained for a long time," said a U.S. official involved in Haiti policy. "Someone's going to have to move one way or another."

A senior State Department official said Powell's remarks were "a reflection of the fact that the situation is stuck. We're working as hard as we can to try to get some progress. Aristide needs to think carefully . . . that he owes a responsibility to the people of Haiti."

In Port-au-Prince, nearly all businesses were closed. Intersections throughout the city were charred from barricades of burning tires set up Wednesday night by police and pro-Aristide militiamen.

"It's like the city is going down into hell," said Bruno Edgard, a spokesman for a broad coalition of business and civic groups demanding Aristide's ouster through peaceful means.

Keith D. Knight, the Jamaican foreign minister, warned the Security Council that the escalating violence was threatening the stability of the region and risking a new flight of refugees that could "overwhelm the resources" of Haiti's neighbors.

The United States, France and other council members resisted the appeal for immediate intervention, saying they would be willing to send peacekeepers to Haiti only after a political settlement. The United States did send a contingent of Marines on Monday to protect the U.S. Embassy.

"If a sustainable political agreement in Haiti is reached, the United States would support efforts to deploy an international force to support implementation," said John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. .

The leaders of the armed rebellion, meanwhile, said they were preparing an assault on Port-au-Prince, a move that Aristide has warned could cost thousands of lives. Guy Philippe, a top rebel leader, told the Reuters news agency on Wednesday that he had ordered his troops to surround the capital.

Philippe, a former police chief and member of the disbanded military, said in an interview Wednesday that rebels already had infiltrated the capital, and he hoped to complete a takeover of the capital by Sunday. Mario Dupuy, a government spokesman, told reporters yesterday afternoon the government is prepared for any rebel assault. "If they come, we are ready," he said.

"I will get him," Philippe, 35, said of Aristide. Asked if Aristide would be allowed to stay in office, Philippe, who is married to a woman from Wisconsin, answered in colloquial English: "No way, Jose."

Radio reports yesterday evening said anti-Aristide rebels had taken Haiti's third-largest city, Les Cayes, in the southern peninsula.

Aristide's opponents charge that since his election in 2000, he has run a corrupt and brutal administration tainted by drug-trafficking and notorious for armed gangs of militiamen who have terrorized and killed thousands of Haitian citizens. They also claim his election was influenced by legislative elections marred by fraud.

Aristide accuses the rebel leaders of being criminals and terrorists.

Philippe has been charged with plotting coups. Louis Jodel Chamblain, a fellow rebel leader and former soldier, was convicted in absentia in Haiti for his role as a leader of the feared FRAPH death squad in a 1994 massacre. In an interview Wednesday, he did not directly answer a question about those allegations, saying only that he was a "righteous man" who had more respect from the people than did Aristide.

"If the United States wants to help the people," Chamblain said, "it should make this idiot leave right away before the people get in the street to do the job."

Sullivan reported from Haiti. Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.

© 2004