Washington ? The Bush administration insisted Monday that Haiti’s exiled president was not kidnapped or strong-armed into fleeing, and said that as many as 2,000 U.S. troops could help to curb violence in the Caribbean nation. White House officials said Jean-Bertrand Aristide left willingly and that the United States aided his safe departure Sunday.

Aristide’s supporters in the United States said the one-time U.S. ally told them American forces made him leave Haiti and that he was being held against his will in the Central African Republic, a charge that country’s foreign affairs minister rejected.

The administration did make clear to Aristide in the tumultuous hours before he left that he could not count on U.S. protection from rebels threatening to storm the presidential palace and kill him. Secretary of State Colin Powell relayed that message Saturday night to Aristide’s Washington lobbyist, former Rep. Ron Dellums, D-Calif., said an administration official speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official said Aristide asked U.S. officials whether some of the 50 Marines that President Bush had sent a week ago to protect the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince might shift to the presidential palace if the rebels drew close.

The answer was no. The response was the same Saturday when members of Aristide’s presidential guard, which included some Americans working as contract employees, asked embassy officials about the prospect of U.S. protection at the palace in the face of an expected assault.

“He was not kidnapped. We did not force him onto the airplane. He went onto the airplane willingly, and that’s the truth,” Powell said.

Bush’s spokesman, Scott McClellan, said, “It’s nonsense, and conspiracy theories like that do nothing to help the Haitian people realize the future that they aspire to.”

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said U.S. troops would remain in Haiti for a “relatively short period.” He said they would join an international force, which could include up to 5,000 troops from France, Canada and elsewhere, that would stay until being replaced by a U.N. peacekeeping force.

Also, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said 800 to 1,000 Haitians had been returned to their country in recent days after being picked up trying to flee by sea.

The crisis had brewed since Aristide’s party won flawed legislative elections in 2000 and international donors froze millions of dollars in aid.

U.S. Marines guard the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Troops landed Monday in Haiti to help restore order after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled the country. Aristide has since alleged the United States forced him to leave.

Opponents said Aristide, the country’s first democratically elected president, broke promises to help the poor, permitted corruption that was fueled by drug trafficking and was behind attacks that armed gangs made on his critics. He denied the charges.

Aristide realized he had to go, said Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla. “He was either leaving on a Learjet or in a casket,” he said. “He chose the jet.”

But advocate Randall Robinson said Aristide told him on the phone Monday that he had been kidnapped at gunpoint by American soldiers and ousted in a U.S.-run coup d’etat, and was being detained in the Central African Republican.

However, the country’s foreign affairs minister, Charles Wenezoui, met Aristide at the airport and said, “He is a free man and the heavy security measures around the presidential palace is for his own security.”

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., who spoke to Aristide on Monday, said: “He said that it was part of the coup — that the resignation was dictated to him, and the Americans told him that they couldn’t protect him any longer.”

Rangel and others members of the Congressional Black Caucus met Monday in New York with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.