22211: (Craig) NYT: U.S. Begins Transfer of a Shaky Haiti to U.N. Hands (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dan Craig <hoosier@att.net>


U.S. Begins Transfer of a Shaky Haiti to U.N. Hands
June 2, 2004
By TIM WEINER

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, June 1 - United States commanders
began turning over this anarchic, flood-ravaged, starving
nation 500 miles from Florida to a handful of United
Nations troops on Tuesday.

The 3,600-member American-led military force brought a
measure of stability to Haiti after the first Marines
landed Feb. 29, the day President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
was forced from power under rebel attack and American
pressure.

Despite its best efforts during the past three months, it
leaves behind a mess. The United Nations mission is to help
make Haiti a functioning democracy capable of holding
national elections sometime next year. That task may take
longer than the mission's six-month mandate.

The rebels first rose up against President Aristide in
February, and they still hold much of the countryside.
Since their rebellion began, Haiti has been hit by
disasters both natural and man-made.

In March, political chaos led to looting and burning in the
capital, destroying government offices, hospital clinics
and warehouses holding food for the hungry in the poorest
nation in the Western world. In April, a transitional
government installed with American backing proved unable to
provide most basic public services, surviving on a lifeline
of foreign money and military force.

Then came the torrential rains that killed thousands and
left tens of thousands homeless a week ago.

The United Nations force, now a few hundred soldiers but
intended to become 8,000 strong, confronts the immediate
crisis of the flood. The toll is more than 2,600 dead and
missing in Haiti, 700 dead and missing over the border in
the Dominican Republic. The missing are presumed dead.

Some 75,000 people affected by the flood will need help to
get through the rainy season, which officially started
Tuesday.

International aid agencies will bear the brunt of that
task. They say they initially underestimated the scale of
the disaster and are scrambling for food, money and
transportation to flood-struck villages, where roads have
been eradicated.

American helicopters carrying tons of food to 15,000
survivors ceased flying Monday, a week after the floods
struck.

"The U.N. peacekeeping mission doesn't have helicopters
right now, and it will take weeks for them to deploy some,"
said Inigo Alvarez, a spokesman for the United Nations
World Food Program, which was already feeding half a
million Haitians before the flood. "Without them, we have a
big problem to solve. The helicopters were essential."

Guy Gauvreau, the food program's director in Haiti, added,
"We deeply deplore that the multinational force has other
priorities."

The aid workers are talking about using mules to ferry aid
to thousands of victims. Given the state of Haiti's interim
government, the agencies say they may have to rent
bulldozers and rebuild the ruined roads themselves.

All the while, Haitian politics continues, a discourse
often carried out at gunpoint.

The interim Haitian government is outgunned by rebel
forces, who control many Haitian towns and villages. The
rebels include former soldiers of the Haitian military, a
force corrupted by Colombian cocaine kingpins and charged
with political killings. In 1991, the military helped
overthrow Mr. Aristide, Haiti's first - and only -
democratically elected leader.

These rebels are calling for the resurrection of the
Haitian Army, disbanded by Mr. Aristide in 1995.

American commanders say the last thing Haiti needs is the
return of its military, long an instrument of political
terror. Armed Aristide loyalists remain a force in
Port-au-Prince, though Mr. Aristide is in exile in South
Africa, and unlikely to be allowed to return anytime soon.

Only a handful of the soldiers for the force cobbled
together by the United Nations are now in Haiti. They have
no headquarters and little money.

Some troops from Canada, France and Chile, nations now in
the American-led force, will remain in Haiti. A handful of
Americans here might stay past June 30, the deadline for
their withdrawal.

The Americans may return. Gen. James T. Hill, chief of the
United States Southern Command, is talking privately about
rotating American forces through Haiti in military
exercises later this year, a senior Western diplomat said
Tuesday.

Brig. Gen. Ronald S. Coleman of the United States Marines
handed over the international military presence to Gen.
Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira, of the Brazilian Army, at a
ceremony held Tuesday morning at the National Police
Academy here. He will lead the United Nations force.

"The stakes are high," Kofi Annan, the United Nations
secretary general, said in a message read at the ceremony
on Tuesday. "This time, let us get it right."

The event at the academy was largely protocol. Actual
command authority will be vested in the United Nations
force on June 20. Some 1,200 Brazilian troops, 150 from
Paraguay, 150 from Uruguay and 350 from Argentina should be
on the ground in Haiti by June 30.

The United Nations has mandated 6,700 troops and 1,622
police officers from 30 countries. The mission may never
reach that force; less than half that number have signed
on.

The American-led disarmament effort rounded up fewer than
200 weapons. The new force has a mandate for disarmament, a
task Haiti's interim government lacks the power to
undertake. "Disarmament is very important," General Pereira
said. "However, spiritual disarmament is even more
important than physical disarmament."

The United Nations troops, who are here as peacekeepers,
are unlikely to try to disarm gunmen by force.

Though American troops are leaving, American foreign policy
stays the same.

It seeks to stop the flow of refugees to Florida. It wants
to fight cocaine traffickers' power to corrupt Haitian
officials who help ship their drugs to the United States.
It will assist Haiti's interim government as it tries to
find its way to elections in 2005.

The interim government was appointed in the chaotic days
following the fall of Mr. Aristide, with armed rebels
looting the capital and pro-Aristide militias shooting at
the newly landed marines. It remains unrecognized by
Caricom, the 15-member community of Caribbean nations.

Many Haitians see the interim government as hand-picked or
heavily influenced by the United States, which escorted Mr.
Aristide out of Haiti on an American plane. In the slums of
Port-au-Prince, where Mr. Aristide's rise from priest to
president began, many still see him as Haiti's true leader.

Leslie F. Manigat, who served as Haiti's president in 1991
and now leads a new political party, the National
Democratic Progressive Coalition, said the desperate
problems of the past three months will resound long after
the six-month mandate of the new United Nations force.

"These latest events are going to affect this country on
the economic and the political level for a very long time,"
he said. "There have been mistakes, lots of mistakes since
Aristide left, starting with the way in which he left, and
the way things have been handled since then."

"I am not a pessimist by nature," the former president
said. "But I have gnawing doubts about the future."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/international/americas/02hait.html?ex=1087146807&ei=1&en=2f026ee8fcc1acc2
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company