23255: (Chamberlain) Troops guard relief operations in flood-hit Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Sept 23 (Reuters) - U.N. peacekeepers beefed up
security on Thursday in a Haitian city where more than 1,000 people died in
floods, after desperate survivors fought each other to get at emergency
food supplies.
     Toussaint Kongo-Doudou, spokesman for a Brazilian-led U.N. force
patrolling the poor Caribbean country after the ouster earlier this year of
former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, said additional U.N. troops would
also guard food convoys heading to Gonaives.
     The decision to boost security around relief operations was made after
U.N. troops had to fire into the air on Wednesday to prevent looting when
the first beans, rice and other supplies were handed out to an estimated
20,000 flood victims.
     "I think it's fair to say that the situation is tense because people
are desperate. Many have not eaten since Saturday night or Sunday morning,"
said Anne Poulsen, spokeswoman for the U.N. World Food Program.
     "It's a concern but it's not a problem," Poulsen added.
     The national civil defense agency said 1,150 bodies had been recovered
by Thursday morning, mainly from Gonaives, a city of 200,000 that was
buried under a wall of water and a thick coat of mud after Tropical Storm
Jeanne triggered torrential rainfall over the weekend.
     Another 1,200 people were still missing and the United Nations warned
the body count could rise dramatically in the coming days because two areas
of Gonaives remained under water and inaccessible.
     A number of children, abandoned or orphaned, were seen roaming around
Gonaives, the Red Cross reported.
     The poorest country in the Americas, Haiti frequently suffers
devastating floods because most of its trees have been chopped down to make
charcoal for cooking. Floods on the Dominican-Haitian border killed about
2,000 people in May.
     Aristide, the deposed president, mourned the latest victims in a
statement issued from his exile in Pretoria, South Africa.
     "It is with great sadness that I watch reports of the devastation
wrought upon Haiti ... Gonaives, the cradle of our independence, has
suffered enormously," he said.
     Gonaives was the city where Haiti declared independence from France
200 years ago after a slave revolt, and it was also where an armed revolt
began against Aristide this year, forcing him to flee on Feb. 29.
     Donor countries, which in July pledged $1.3 billion to help Haiti
bring an end to chronic political instability and poverty, met in the
capital, Port-au-Prince, on Thursday and were expected to discuss how they
could help the country of 8 million cope with another humanitarian
catastrophe.
     Officials said the meeting had been scheduled before the floods and
was originally aimed at finding ways to speed up the arrival of the pledged
development funds.
     Jeanne, now a hurricane, also killed 11 people in the Dominican
Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, and two in the
U.S. Caribbean territory of Puerto Rico.
     The hurricane, with winds of 105 mph (165 kph) was 465 miles (745 km)
east of Great Abaco island in the Bahamas by 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) and
moving on a westerly track that could have it threatening Florida by the
weekend.