Haiti's new military rulers appeared alone in the world yesterday, condemned for overthrowing the country's first freely elected president, Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
The United States began exerting pressure to reverse the coup, after helping to arrange Fr Aristide 's safe passage into exile.
From Venezuela, where he is staying for the moment, Fr Aristide vowed to return home and restore democracy: 'There is a general who is trying to rob the people of democratic power and I am sure that with the support of the international community . . . we can overthrow him.'
General Raoul Cedras, the army commander who heads the new three-man military junta, was a 'power hungry slaughterer', Fr Aristide added in a French radio interview.
Washington refused to recognise the new regime and announced suspension of all economic and military aid, amounting to more than Dollars 80 million ( pounds 46 million).
The Organisation of American States demanded Fr Aristide 's return to power, as did France, which cut off Dollars 38 million in aid. The European Community threatened to suspend Dollars 150 million worth of aid.
Sporadic shooting continued in the capital, Port-au-Prince, whose streets were heavily patrolled by troops. A night curfew was imposed.
The official death toll since the coup on Sunday night was around 30, but hospital officials put it at more than 100. 'We'll never know the real figure because most of the bodies never reach the hospital,' said one.
Fr Aristide arrived in Caracas yesterday morning on the personal jet of the Venezuelan president, Carlos Andreas Perez. He was staying at the French embassy while considering whether to stay in the region or take up an offer of asylum by France. Today he is due in Washington for an emergency OAS ministerial meeting on the coup.
Fr Aristide , aged 38, left Haiti with five relatives and his former police chief. Three members of his cabinet were arrested - the prime minister, Rene Preval, and the ministers of information and planning. Others were reported to be seeking asylum in foreign embassies.
Roger Lafontant, who briefly seized power last January in a bid to stop Fr Aristide , then president-elect, from taking office, meanwhile escaped from the national prison.
Gen Cedras, aged 42, earlier appealed to citizens in a broadcast to help restore calm so that new elections could be held at an unspecified date. He said the army had been forced to take over 'to keep the ship of state afloat'. He added: 'After seven months of democracy the country is once again in the grip of the horror of uncertainty.'
He said the army, which he called an 'apolitical body', would guarantee freedom. It would not tolerate looting or the practice of murder by 'necklacing'.
The two other members of the new junta are the deputy army chief, Colonel Alix Sylva, and Colonel Henri Robert Marc Charles, a hardliner.