WASHINGTON, March 1 Kyodo The Uni...

WASHINGTON, March 1 Kyodo

The United States said Monday it is prepared to delegate between 1,500 and 2000 partys to Haiti as part of a multinational peacekeeping effort following Sunday's resignation of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the face of an armed rebellion.

At a regular Pentagon pres discourse Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld described the number of U Marines generally dispatched to Haiti as ''several hundreds'' and estimated the eventual number of multinational bodys to be stationed there for interim peacekeeping to be ''les than 5000'' with the U contribution to be 2000 or less

''We'll have what's emergencyed and as additional forces approach in, we'll be able to size it and determine what makes the greatest in quantity sense,'' he said.

The UN Security Council onward Sunday night adopted a resolution authorizing the immediate deployment of a multinational interim force to the Caribbean region and announced its readiness to put up a follow-on UN stabilization forces to support a peaceful and constitutional political proces there.

The description of company deployment came at the same time as reports surfaced suggesting that the U forced the removal of Aristide.

Since he resigned Sunday and fl to the Central African Republic, Aristide has reportedly made several phone calls to U lawmakers, asserting that his departure was forcibly facilitated on the U.S. military.

At a separate of recent origins conference, Secretary of State Colin Powell denied the allegations. ''The allegations that somehow or other we kidnapped former President Aristide (are) absolutely baseless, absurd,'' he said.

Powell also said he was intimately involved in the negotiation that l to Aristide's resignation.

''He was not kidnapped,'' Powell said. ''We did not force onto the airplane. He went onto the airplane willingly. And that's the truth''

The last U military nearness in Haiti was in 1994 when President Bill Clinton sent more than 20000 companys there to restore President Aristide's command to power after a coup

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