20969: Esser: UN Peacekeepers Should Stay in Haiti for 20 Years, Envoy Says (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Bloomberg.com

March 30, 2004

UN Peacekeepers Should Stay in Haiti for 20 Years, Envoy Says

March 30 (Bloomberg) -- The United Nations should keep peacekeeping
soldiers in Haiti for at least 20 years to rebuild the
violence-plagued Caribbean nation that is the poorest in the Western
Hemisphere, the UN's special envoy said today.

Reginald Dumas told the Security Council that 10 international
missions to Haiti in the past 10 years left the country with no
stable governmental organizations, leading to the rebel insurgency
that toppled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide last month.

``You cannot continue with the stop-start cycle that has
characterized relations between the international community and
Haiti,'' Dumas said after a closed-door briefing to the Security
Council. ``You cannot go in and spend a couple of years and leave.
Then the whole thing collapses. This has to stop.''

The envoy's recommendation would put Haiti's 8 million people under
international protection for a generation. The Security Council voted
on March 1 to send a ``multinational interim force'' for as long as
three months, followed by a UN peacekeeping mission.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan is to recommend the size and mandate of
that mission in a report to the council this week.

The U.S. is leading the interim force, which includes 1,940 U.S.
soldiers, almost all of them Marines, along with 825 French troops,
about 500 Canadians and almost 330 Chileans, according to Miami-based
U.S. Southern Command. Chilean troops escorted two food aid convoys
today in one part of the mission. Forces elsewhere are training
Haitian police to disarm rebels.

Gangs, Kidnapping

Dumas told the council that while the security situation has improved
in the capital Port-au-Prince and on the main roads around the city,
the country has no more than 2,000 police and no military to enforce
law elsewhere.

``You can't effectively have the rule of law in such circumstances,''
Dumas told reporters after the Security Council meeting. ``There are
armed gangs and a great deal of kidnapping for ransom.''

He said that election of a new government probably couldn't be held
for at least 18 months.

The Security Council didn't discuss the request for an investigation
of Aristide's departure from Haiti by the 15-nation Caribbean
Community, according to Ambassador Heraldo Munoz of Chile, a council
member. Aristide has said from exile that the U.S. removed him from
power in what amounted to a coup d'etat. U.S. officials insist he
left voluntarily with U.S. help to escape rebels who were advancing
on the capital.

Haiti has a history of political instability since it declared
independence from France in 1804 after a revolt by half a million
black slaves. The nation had a per-capita economic output of $425 in
2002, and is beset with AIDS, illiteracy and drug trafficking.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Bill Varner at the United Nations at wvarner@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor of this story:
Glenn Hall at ghall@bloomberg.net
.