Port-au-Prince, Haiti: President Jean-Bertrand Aristide left Haiti on Sunday, bowing to pressure from a rebellion at home and diplomats from abroad, said his Cabinet minister and close adviser Leslie Voltaire. At least three other sources confirmed the information, including diplomats and a security aide said to have accompanied Aristide.

One diplomatic source in Port-au-Prince said Aristide signed a letter of resignation before he left.

Voltaire said Aristide was flying to the Dominican Republic and would seek asylum in Morocco, Taiwan or Panama. An unmarked white jet took off from Port-au-Prince's airport early Sunday morning, and Voltaire said Aristide was on board along with his palace security chief, Frantz Gabriel.

Shortly after, a convoy of cars pulled up to the tarmac alongside a second jet. Journalists couldn't see who got onto the plane. It wasn't clear where Aristide's wife, Mildred Trouillot Aristide, was. The couple had sent their two daughters to Trouillot's mother in New York last week. R
Canadian military police were at the airport, but they refused to say who was on the planes. A resignation by Aristide would open the way for a U.S.-led plan to install Supreme Court Chief Justice Boniface Alexandre, the president's constitutional successor, to head a transitional government. Alexandre is honored for his honesty in a judicial system notorious for corruption. It wasn't immediately possible to reach him. Aristide's departure came as fighters in a popular rebellion that erupted three weeks ago drew within 40 kilometers of Port-au-Prince, the capital, and threatened to attack, unless the president resigned.

In Cap-Haitien, a Haitian city captured by rebels a week ago, rebel fighters hugged each other with glee, yelling, "Aristide's gone! Aristide's out!"

France, Haiti's former colonizer, and the U.S., which sent 20,000 troops to restore Aristide after a coup in 1994, had urged him to step down for the good of his Caribbean nation of 8 million people.

Bureau Report