Ex-Haitian president returns from exile

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned home from seven years in exile to a celebrity welcome Friday, and immediately took a swipe at the decision to bar his political party from the country's presidential election.

Aristide, addressing reporters and a Haitian public that clustered around TVs and radios throughout the country, said the decision not to allow his Lavalas Family party disenfranchised the majority in a sharply divided nation.

"Excluding Lavalas, you cut the branches that link the people," he said. "The solution is inclusion of all Haitians as human beings."

His remarks were otherwise largely devoted to thanking supporters who stayed loyal to him during his exile and helped engineer his return over the objections of the U.S. government.

Haiti's electoral council barred Lavalas from the elections for technical reasons that its supporters say were bogus. Many of its members are boycotting Sunday's runoff election. Still, several people affiliated in the past with the now-less-prominent party ran in the first round of the election.

Twice elected president and twice deposed, Aristide is a popular but also polarizing figure. The former priest is an advocate of the poor, who make up the vast majority of Haiti's 10 million people, and he was a leader of the movement that shook off a hated dictatorship.

But he has many critics who say he led a corrupt government, orchestrated violent attacks on foes and was as hungry for power as the leaders he denounced. He was last ousted in a violent 2004 rebellion that swept the country.

On Friday, Aristide was mobbed by close allies and journalists outside his private plane before being hustled into an airport VIP lounge as several thousand supporters rallied in the streets outside the terminal.

"It's one of the most beautiful moments for the Haitian people," actor Danny Glover, who accompanied Aristide from South Africa, told The Associated Press as he left the VIP lounge before Aristide. "It's a historic moment for the Haitian people."

In the street outside the airport, people listened joyfully to remarks from Aristide broadcast on car radios.

"This man is our father, without him we haven't lived," said 31-year-old Sainvil Petit-Frere, one of about 3,000 cheering and chanting supporters in a quickly growing crowd in the capital, Port-au-Prince.