a1473: U.N. names Frenchman to monitor rights in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     UNITED NATIONS, March 26 (Reuters) - The United Nations on Tuesday
named French legal expert Louis Joinet to monitor human rights in Haiti.
     Joinet, 68, has served in France as a human rights expert and legal
adviser to the late President Francois Mitterrand and five prime ministers.
     During a long legal career, he has also been a judge, a senior
prosecutor, a solicitor general for two top French courts and director of a
national agency set up to safeguard civil liberties in the computer age.
     Joinet was named independent expert on human rights in Haiti by the
Geneva-based U.N. Commission on Human Rights, succeeding Adama Dieng of
Senegal, who resigned a year ago.
     Haiti, one of the world's poorest nations, has a long history of
coups, political unrest and violence.
     The United Nations sent a peacekeeping mission to the Caribbean nation
in March 1995 but shut it down in February 2001, saying it was underfunded
and could not function properly in a climate of political turmoil.