Haiti's ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his wife, Mildred, are escorted to a press conference in Bangui, Central African Republic, yesterday. Aristide called for 'peaceful resistance' against what he described as the occupation of his homeland.(Photo: AP)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - Haiti's interim president took the reigns of his country's shattered government yesterday, as ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide restated his claim to be Haiti's true leader from his faraway African asylum and his supporters shouted demands for his return at the gates of the national palace.

"Aristide or death!" Aristide followers yelled, their voices carrying into the room where President Boniface Alexandre was installed at the presidential palace and urged the chaotic country to remain calm.

"We are all brothers and sisters," said Alexandre, who has served as president for a week and was officially sworn in on Sunday. "We are all in the same boat, and if it sinks, it sinks with all of us."

Military helicopters circled overhead and US Marines in armoured cars patrolled the streets outside the palace where Aristide's followers declared: "Like it or not, Aristide must come back!"

"What the Americans did was a sham," said Bertrand Exilus, a 32-year-old tailor. "We elected Aristide. We did not elect Alexandre. George W Bush does not respect democracy."

Alexandre did not address Aristide's claim that he is still Haiti's president, made at his first public appearance since he arrived March 1 in Central African Republic, aboard a plane chartered by the US government.

"I am the democratically elected president and I remain so. I plead for the restoration of democracy," Aristide said from Bangui, the capital of another impoverished and coup-ridden state.

"We appeal for a peaceful resistance," he added, saying his February 29 departure was a "political kidnapping (that) unfortunately opened the road to an occupation".

The United States denies Aristide's charge that Washington forced him to step down. But the 15-nation Caribbean Community has called for an international investigation.

US Marines and French Legionnaires began arriving the same day he left to form the vanguard of a UN force to restore peace in Haiti, where a month-long rebellion left more than 130 dead. Reprisal killings continue.

A frenzy of looting that erupted the day before Aristide's flight and waned with the arrival of peacekeepers resurged yesterday. Hundreds of people ransacked Port-au-Prince's industrial park, carrying away wood paneling, toilets, even a plastic Mickey Mouse. One looter wore the top part of horse costume on his head as he made off with a mirror. The looting took place less than a kilometre (half a mile) from the international airport where US Marines have set up base.

Inside the palace, Alexandre, the country's Supreme Court chief justice, urged people "to keep calm. No one has the right to do justice by themselves".

Yesterday's pro-Aristide protest was mostly peaceful, a sharp contrast to the massive anti-Aristide protest Sunday in which gunmen opened fire, killing at least five people, including a foreign journalist. A sixth victim died of wounds overnight, doctors at Canape Vert Hospital said.

US Marines said they shot one gunman at Sunday's demonstration, raising the toll to seven. "He had a gun and he was shooting at Marines," Col Charles Gurganus told reporters yesterday.

But the man's body was not recovered and his identity was not known.

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