20961: (Chamberlain) Haiti needs 18 months to elections - U.N. envoy (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     UNITED NATIONS, March 30 (Reuters) - Haiti will need 18 months to
organize elections following last month's armed rebellion and the departure
of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a U.N. adviser on the impoverished
Caribbean nation said on Tuesday.
     Envoy Reginald Dumas, who just returned from a 10-day visit to Haiti
and a meeting of Caribbean nations, also said the U.N. Security Council
accepted that countries needed "to get away from a stop-start cycle" on aid
to Haiti and give it sustained, long-term assistance.
     "Some people feel that elections should be held not later than the end
of the year," Dumas told reporters after briefing the 15-member council.
"The consensus that I have detected is a transition period of about 18
months to the holding of elections, but less if possible."
     U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Dumas on Feb. 26 to the
new post of special adviser. He has been working with a U.N. assessment
team laying the groundwork for an eventual peacekeeping operation to help
Haiti rebuild after the revolt and Aristide's departure.
     The Security Council asked Annan to make recommendations by the end of
March on the U.N. mission's size and goals before it takes over from a
U.S.-led multinational force around the beginning of June.
     Dumas said he briefed the council on Monday on security, humanitarian
needs, human rights and the collapsed institutions of Haiti.
     "There has to be long term commitment, which I perceive the council is
ready and willing to give," Dumas said. "And by long term, I'm personally
thinking of a period of not less than 20 years."
     Annan himself has said that efforts to help rebuild Haiti's police,
judiciary and other major institutions would take "10 years or more."