21358: (Chamberlain) France says Haiti mission improves U.S. relations (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, April 15 (Reuters) - French Defense Minister
Michele Alliot-Marie said Thursday that joint military efforts to restore
stability in Haiti had helped ease tensions between the United States and
France.
     Alliot-Marie met with her country's troops during a 14-hour visit to
Haiti, the first visit by a French minister since the former French colony
won independence in a slave revolt 200 years ago.
     French gendarmes and U.S. Marines have patrolled the Haitian capital's
streets and conducted joint disarmament efforts in the Caribbean nation,
where heavily armed gangs had been calling the shots since democratically
elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide went into exile on Feb. 29 amid a
bloody rebellion and pressure from the United States and France to step
down.
     Alliot-Marie said the troops' cooperative relationship demonstrated
"an appeased image of relations between France and the U.S."
     French and U.S. troops conducted similar joint operations in
Afghanistan and the Balkans, but the Haitian mission marked the first time
they have joined forces since Paris and Washington clashed over the U.S.
war in Iraq.
     Alliot-Marie said the joint mission in Haiti "illustrates the
partnership, the alliance, the audacity that exist between the two
countries."
     "I know the U.S. military salute your work and the way you carry out
your mission," she told some of the 1,000 French troops taking part in a
U.S.-led peacekeeping force in Haiti.
     Surrounded by security forces in camouflage and blue uniforms, she
promised France's assistance in improving health conditions, education,
roads and other structures in the poorest nation in the Americas.
     The French took control of security operations in Cap Haitien and
other northern towns in the weeks following Aristide's departure.
     The French troops are part of a 3,600-strong multinational interim
force sanctioned by the United Nations to provide security in Haiti after
Aristide's fall. The one-time hero of Haitian democracy who helped
overthrow the Duvalier family dictatorship in the 1980s is now in Jamaica.