22273: Esser: Argentine Nobel Prize winner criticizes sending troops to Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

XINHUA

June 6, 2004

Argentine Nobel Prize winner criticizes sending troops to Haiti


BUENOS AIRES, June 2 (Xinhuanet) -- Argentina's 1980 Nobel Peace
Prize laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel on Wednesday criticized the
sending of Argentine troops to Haiti and argued that "support (for
Haiti) should be given in a different way."

"The sending of troops doesn't solve anything," Esquivel said. He
called on international financial organizations to cancel Haiti's
foreign debts in order to realize peace in the Caribbean country.

The Argentine Congress will discuss next Wednesday whether to
authorize sending troops to Haiti as part of the UN peacekeeping
forces there.

"We say yes, we must support Haiti but in a different way," Perez
Esquivel stressed.

He said that the decision by Argentine President Nestor Kirchner to
dispatch troops to Haiti "is an attempt to get closer to the
politics" of US President George W. Bush.

The dispatch of 598 members of the Argentine Army and Marine
Infantry, along with equipment, a ship and a mobile hospital, willbe
debated by the Chamber of Senators on Wednesday and later by the
Chamber of Deputies.

The main opposition party, the Radical Civic Union, has
already decided to vote against the deployment of troops abroad.
.