28607: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Security Post (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, July 13 (AP) -- President Rene Preval appointed a former
police official to Haiti's top national security post, charging him with
combatting a new wave of violence blamed on warring street gangs.
   Preval announced Luc Eucher Joseph's appointment as national security
undersecretary Wednesday night.
   Joseph, a Preval ally and former head of the police internal affairs
division, takes over as the troubled Caribbean nation faces a surge in
kidnappings and killings by well-armed street gangs based in the dense,
lawless slums of the capital.
   Last week, 22 people, including women and a child, were found shot to
death in the Martissant slum. Witnesses said heavily armed gangsters from a
rival area broke into the victims' homes and shot them one-by-one.
   The U.S. State Department last week reissued a warning to Americans of
the risks involved in visiting Haiti.
   The violence, following months of relative calm, has raised fears of a
return to the bloodshed seen following the February 2004 ouster of former
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected
leader.