18758: Burnham: Globe and Mail: Canada could send 100 police to Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: thor burnham <thorald_mb@hotmail.com>

Canada could send 100 police to Haiti
International force might be established if political solution found, Graham
says

By JEFF SALLOT
Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - Page A16

OTTAWA -- Canada could send up to 100 police officers to Haiti as part of an
international stabilization force if President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and
rebels agree to resolve differences peacefully, Foreign Affairs Minister
Bill Graham said yesterday as diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis picked
up pace.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he is staying in close
touch with senior diplomats from Haiti's Caribbean neighbours and with the
Organization of American States about how the international community
"should become much more actively engaged" in the crisis.

"And so, I may have some announcement in the next few days," Mr. Annan
added.

Meanwhile, Haitian Prime Minister Yvon Neptune appealed for unspecified
international help to deal with the uprising because the country's
5,000-member police force can't cope with the unrest in about a dozen towns.

"We are witnessing the coup d'état machine in motion," Mr. Neptune told
reporters in Port-au-Prince, the capital.

He refused to say whether he is seeking foreign military intervention to
prop up the government.

In any event, Canada, the United States and other Western countries say they
will not provide military or police assistance until the rebels and the
Aristide government agree on some sort of peaceful political process leading
up to elections.

Mr. Graham said Canada could provide about 100 French-speaking police
officers to help maintain peace if conditions were right.

"But I want to make it very clear that it would only be if there is a
political solution in Haiti and we are acting in conjunction with other
countries such as the United States, the Bahamas and others," Mr. Graham
said.

The Bahamas and other countries in the Caribbean Community (Caricom) have
been trying to act as mediators in the current conflict, which has taken the
lives of about 50 people.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday that there is no
interest in Washington in sending soldiers or police officers to Haiti until
rebels and the government agree on some sort of political solution. Only
then would there be "willing nations that would come forward with a police
presence to implement the political agreement."

In Paris, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said the French government,
which has military garrisons in the Caribbean, could deploy resources to its
former colony quickly for a "humanitarian intervention" if the violence ends
and political dialogue resumes.

In Ottawa, International Co-operation Minister Aileen Carroll announced
Canadian emergency humanitarian assistance totalling $1.1-million to be
funnelled through aid agencies that continue to function in Haiti.

Aid agencies, meanwhile, called for urgent international action, warning
that Haiti is on "the verge of a generalized civil war."

President Aristide, a former slum priest who was ousted in a coup in 1991
but reinstated by a U.S.-led military force three years later and re-elected
in 2000, is accused by opposition politicians of using the police and armed
militants to stamp out dissent.

The opposition also says corrupt officials are plundering the treasury while
ordinary Haitians sink deeper into poverty.

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