Warning Shots Fired Before Haiti-Bound Ship : Caribbean: Coast Guard takes action after vessel refuses to leave area. In capital, an Aristide ally is reportedly kidnaped.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A Coast Guard cutter helping enforce the U.N. embargo against Haiti fired warning shots across the bow of a Haiti-bound merchant ship Thursday after it refused to change course, the Defense Department announced, while in Haiti’s capital gunmen reportedly grabbed a legislative ally of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Samuel Milord, a National Assembly deputy whose family said he was dragged from a house late Wednesday, had only recently come out of hiding since denouncing leaders of the bloody coup that ousted Aristide two years ago.

However, the president of Haiti’s lower house, Antoine Joseph, said Milord had not been kidnaped but had gone into hiding after death threats.

Milord’s disappearance followed the assassinations of pro-Aristide businessman Antoine Izmery on Sept. 11 and Justice Minister Guy Malary a week ago. Malary was part of the interim government appointed by Aristide, Haiti’s first freely elected president, under a U.N. plan for restoring democracy.

In waters off Haiti, the Coast Guard cutter Vigilant fired warning shots across the bow of the Don Jose, a merchant vessel registered in the Turks and Caicos Islands, after it disregarded instructions to leave Haitian waters because part of its cargo could not be inspected, according to a statement by the U.S. Atlantic Command.

The ship left the area after the Coast Guard fired two 10-round bursts of .50-caliber machine gun fire as a warning, the statement said. The ship was not damaged, and no one was hurt.

Officers who boarded the Don Jose were unable to inspect about one-third of the ship’s cargo, the statement said. None of the inspected cargo violated the embargo. It was not immediately clear why the remainder of the cargo was inaccessible to the inspectors.

It was the seventh ship intercepted since U.S. and Canadian vessels began enforcing the embargo Tuesday.

Earlier Thursday, the Navy said it made the first interception of a Haiti-bound merchant ship bearing cargo prohibited by the embargo. None of the other ships intercepted were carrying prohibited goods.

In that incident, the U.S. guided missile cruiser Gettysburg stopped the Honduran merchant ship Seawind II about 5:30 a.m. PDT Thursday, according to a statement issued by the U.S. Atlantic Command in Norfolk, Va.

The merchant ship’s master reported he was en route to Bioay, Haiti. Coast Guard officers boarded and searched the Seawind II and found about 6,000 barrels of motor oil. The U.N. embargo prohibits the export to Haiti of weapons, petroleum and petroleum products.

The U.S. Atlantic Command said the Honduran vessel was diverted to Miami and was monitored to ensure it left Haitian waters.

Meanwhile, family members of kidnaped legislator Milord told local radio that gunmen burst into a home in which he was staying in the capital’s Debussy section and took him away. Shots were reported in the neighborhood Wednesday night.

An official with Milord’s pro-Aristide coalition, the National Front for Change and Democracy, confirmed the information. The government of Prime Minister Robert Malval was checking into the report.

Milord, a civil engineer, was one of the first lawmakers to denounce the Sept. 30, 1991, coup that ousted Aristide, and refused to take part in Parliament sessions in which lawmakers were forced at gunpoint to declare the presidency vacant.

Like many Aristide supporters, he went into hiding after the coup and just recently emerged in public.