24192: (pub) Chamberlain: Haiti-American Troops (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By AMY BRACKEN

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 2 (AP) -- U.S. troops are returning to Haiti to
build schools and provide medical care in a humanitarian mission that comes
nearly a year after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in a
three-week rebellion, officials said Wednesday.
   The mission will involve about 1,000 troops from the Army and Navy over
a three-month period, said Lt. Col. James Marshall, a spokesman for U.S.
Southern Command in Miami.
   The troops, about 50 of whom arrived Tuesday, will focus their efforts
in Gonaives, a northern town where the rebellion began a year ago and where
floods in September killed nearly 2,000 people and left schools, hospitals
and village roads in ruins.
   Construction is expected to begin in mid-February, Marshall said.
   The humanitarian project is part of the New Horizons program, an
overseas training exercise in which troops carry out missions in six
Caribbean and Latin American countries each year.
   The USS Saipan anchored off Gonaives earlier this week, with 1,200 tons
of construction materials and humanitarian equipment, according to a U.S.
Embassy statement. The materials are expected to be unloaded by helicopter
and watercraft later this week.
   The troops will live on the ship until they build a temporary camp.
   After Aristide fled the country a year ago, U.S. troops led a
3,600-member multinational task force. The United States surrendered
control in June to a Brazil-led U.N. force.
   There are currently about 7,400 U.N. troops, including international
police.