"The White House, Pentagon and State Department on Monday denied allegations Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped by U.S. forces eager for him to resign and be spirited into exile. With U.S. military forces already on the ground in the Caribbean nation and more on the way, chief presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said, "It's nonsense, and conspiracy theories do nothing to help the Haitian people move forward to a better more free, more prosperous future." Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld also vehemently denied that Aristide had been forced out by the United States. And Secretary of State Colin Powell forcefully dismissed the allegation as well, saying Aristide boarded the plane willingly. [edit] An African-American activist, Randall Robinson, said Aristide told him on the phone Monday that he had been kidnapped at gunpoint by American soldiers and ousted in a U.S. coup d'etat. Aristide said he was being held prisoner at the Renaissance Palace in Bangui, Central African Republic, Robinson said. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., told CNN that when he spoke with Aristide Monday morning, the exiled Haitian leader told him that the international community had let him down — "that he was kidnapped, that he resigned under pressure, that he was taken to a central African country." Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., told CNN that she talked on the phone with Aristide's wife, Mildred, who said that Aristide was "forced to leave his home." Waters said an embassy official told Aristide that he "had to go now — that if he didn't go he would be killed and a lot of Haitians would be killed." Powell said flatly, "He was not kidnapped," and criticized U.S. congressmen for saying that Aristide had been, without checking with the Bush administration first to see what the story was.

"The departure of Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide is a victory for a Bush administration hard-liner who has been long dedicated to Aristide's ouster, U.S. foreign policy analysts say. That official is Roger Noriega, assistant U.S. secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, whose influence over U.S. policy toward Haiti has increased during the past decade as he climbed the diplomatic ladder in Washington. "Roger Noriega has been dedicated to ousting Aristide for many, many years, and now he's in a singularly powerful position to accomplish it," Robert White, a former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador and Paraguay, said last week. White, now president of the Center for International Policy, a think tank in Washington, said Noriega's ascent largely has been attributed to his ties to North Carolina Republican Jesse Helms, an arch-conservative foe of Aristide who had behind-the-scenes influence over policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean before retiring from the Senate two years ago. ... Noriega's involvement with Haiti dates back more than a decade. In the early 1990s he was an adviser at the U.S. mission to the Organization of American States. Between 1994 and 1997, he served as a senior staff member on the House of Representatives' Committee on International Relations. Then, in 1997, he went to work for the Senate's Committee on Foreign Relations as a top aide to Helms. Helms was passionate in his dislike of Aristide and tried mightily to stop President Bill Clinton from sending troops to restore Aristide to power in 1994 after his violent ouster three years previously. In an attempt to forestall that military action, Helms released a now-discredited CIA report purporting to show Aristide was "psychotic." Helms found a like-minded official in Noriega, who fed the senator's hostility toward Aristide, said Robert Maguire of Trinity College in Washington. "Roger Noriega always sought to have a long leash when it came to Haiti, and Helms was more than happy to accommodate anti-Aristide feelings," Maguire said. In 2001, with Helms' strong backing, Noriega, a Kansas native of Mexican descent, was appointed U.S. permanent representative to the Organization of American States.

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Monday accused the United States of forcing him out of office in a "coup d'etat." Aristide told CNN in an interview from the Central African Republic, where he is in exile, that the United States "forced" him to leave the country after a bloody rebellion. "I was told that to avoid bloodshed I'd better leave," he said. "No one should force an elected president to move," Aristide added. Asked about allegations he was kidnapped, he said in a text of the interview released by CNN: "As I said, I called this coup d'etat in a modern way, to have modern kidnapping." On who kidnapped him, Aristide said: "Forces in Haiti. They were not Haitian forces. They were (unintelligible) and Americans and Haitians together, acting to surround the airport, my house, the palace. "And then, despite of diplomatic conversations we had, despite of all we did in a diplomatic way to prevent them to organize that massacre which would lead to a bloodshed, we had to leave and spent 20 hours in an American plane. "And not knowing where we were going with force, until they told us that 20 minutes before they landed in Central African Republic." Earlier, several people, including two U.S. lawmakers, reported that Aristide told them by telephone that he did not leave Haiti voluntarily, but was "abducted" by U.S. troops. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, flatly denied Aristide had been forced to leave. White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the charge "complete nonsense." But Aristide insisted, "I am telling you the truth." "They lied to me," he added.