US Marines were sent to Haiti to help restore order yesterday after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled his chaotic Caribbean country in the face of a bloody armed revolt. French troops were also due to arrive there this morning.
The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting late last night to approve a resolution authorising the deployment of a multinational force, which was also to include Canada and Haiti's Caribbean neighbours.
Mr Aristide said he resigned to avert "a bloodbath" but turmoil persisted in the capital, Port-au-Prince, last night, where shooting rang out as armed Aristide supporters roamed the streets.
President Bush ordered the immediate deployment of US Marines to serve as the vanguard of an international security force to help head off a power struggle and restore stability.
Mr Bush said the fact Mr Aristide had fled Haiti to an unknown destination early yesterday morning meant that "the constitution is working. There is an interim president. I have ordered the deployment of marines as the leading element of an international, interim force to help bring order and stability to Haiti".
Mr Aristide left 24 days after the uprising began in the poorest country in the Americas.
The US, which along with former colonial power France had called on Mr Aristide to quit to help bring an end to the crisis, urged the rebels to lay down their arms.
One of the rebel leaders said after Mr Aristide left that "we don't intend to fight any more. If we move in Port-au-Prince it will be to put \ security but we don't intend to fight any more."
The revolt, which capped months of simmering political tensions, had spread over much of the country since it erupted on February 5th and killed nearly 70 people.
The departure of Mr Aristide was arranged by US officials. "At his request, we facilitated his safe departure," a State Department official said in Washington.
Within hours, Haitian Chief Justice Boniface Alexandre was named to replace Mr Aristide, as laid out in the constitution.
Mr Aristide's destination was unclear. Haiti's consul in the capital of the neighbouring Dominican Republic said he travelled to the eastern Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda to have the aircraft refuelled, and then was planning to travel to Morocco. But Morocco said it would not grant him asylum. Several of Mr Aristide's supporters escaped to the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.
Prime Minister Mr Yvon Neptune read a statement by Mr Aristide in which he said, "If tonight my resignation is the decision that can avoid a bloodbath, I consent to leave with hope there will be life, not death."
With the rebels closing in on Port-au-Prince, many had feared a bloody battle for control with Mr Aristide's militant supporters.
A Haitian staff member of Concern, the Irish aid agency, was hijacked in his car at Port-au-Prince but had escaped, the country director, Mr Kieron Crawley, said.
Speaking to The Irish Times from Port-au-Prince, Mr Crawley said the worker was uninjured but badly shaken.