25412: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Peace Corps (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By STEVENSON JACOBS

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, June 16 (AP) -- The Peace Corps has suspended operations
in Haiti and evacuated its 16 volunteers because of increasing violence,
officials said Thursday, even as gunmen wounded two U.N. peacekeepers
during a shootout in a slum.
   The withdrawal comes three weeks after the State Department warned
Americans against traveling to Haiti and ordered nonessential U.S.
personnel to leave. All 16 volunteers left Haiti earlier this week, Peace
Corps spokeswoman Barbara Daly said.
   Peruvian U.N. soldiers were patrolling the sprawling seaside slum of
Cite Soleil in an armored vehicle when they came under fire from armed
gunmen, U.N. military spokesman Lt. Col. Elouafi Boulbars said.
   One soldier was hit in the chest and listed in critical condition, while
another soldier was shot in the knee, Boulbars said. Both were being
treated at a U.N. military hospital in the capital, Port-au-Prince. It was
unclear if any gunmen were wounded.
   Plagued with insecurity, the State Department warned there was no
effective police force in much of Haiti, beset by gunbattles and
kidnappings since the February 2004 armed uprising that toppled President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
   An ill-equipped police force and 7,400 U.N. peacekeepers have struggled
to control slums filled with armed gangs, many of them loyal to Aristide.
   The Peace Corps volunteers had been working in rural areas on projects
including small business development, agricultural assistance and HIV/AIDS
prevention, Daly said. She said the Peace Corps would consider returning to
Haiti "once the situation has stabilized."
   "It's very disappointing for us to have to leave," Daly said. "We
determined that it was in the best interest of the volunteers that we
suspend the program at this time."
   The Peace Corps has been working in Haiti since 1996. It pulled out
during the armed uprising that ousted Aristide, returning six months later.
   More than 700 people -- including 40 police -- have been slain in Haiti
since September, when Aristide supporters began stepping up calls for his
return from exile in South Africa.
   Critics accuse the Haitian police of brutality, summary executions and
persecution of Aristide loyalists. The interim government says the police
are outgunned and outnumbered by politically allied gangsters.