24767: Hermantin (news) U.N. checks Haiti's progress

[sak-pase@bimini.ws]

leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Thu, Apr. 14, 2005
PEACEKEEPING MISSION
U.N. checks Haiti's progress

With a peacekeeping mission in Haiti due for renewal soon, members of the 
U.N. Security Council made a rare trip to see firsthand the problems that 
have gripped the nation.

BY JANE REGAN
Special to The Herald

PORT-AU-PRINCE - Acknowledging criticism of the U.N. peacekeeping mission 
here, U.N. Security Council members on a rare field trip outside New York 
Wednesday said the peacekeepers' marching orders may be changed next month.

Clashes between police and heavily armed gangs that support or oppose former 
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide have left scores of dead in the 
hemisphere's poorest nation since Aristide was forced to resign amid an 
armed revolt early last year.

The 15-member Security Council ''will profit from this opportunity of the 
mission in order to form its understanding of the situation and to bring in 
ideas and recommendations'' when the peacekeepers' mandate is to be renewed 
next month, said Brazilian U.N. Ambassador Ronaldo Mota Sardenberg.

Sardenberg, who is leading the rare four-day visit by Security Council 
members, who usually meet in New York, also said the diplomats will check on 
the peacekeepers' progress, the human rights situation and that plans for 
elections are on track for the fall.

One of 18 U.N. peacekeeping efforts around the world, and the first one ever 
to be so heavily dominated by Latin American troops, the Brazilian-led 
mission to Haiti has about 7,400 soldiers and police in place.

The forces are charged with stemming violence, disarming the gangs, 
monitoring human rights, improving the country's much-criticized police 
force and helping to pave the way for elections.

MAKING STRIDES

Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue said Tuesday that he would tell the 
U.N. visitors that there is ''a world of difference'' in Haiti today 
compared to last year, in large part, because of the U.N. peacekeepers.

But the peacekeepers' work has been extremely difficult, and the U.N. 
soldiers and police have been harshly criticized for their reluctance to use 
force in their efforts to stem the violence and collect weapons.

Late last month, a Geneva-based group estimated that civilians and 
''nonstate'' armed groups in Haiti have more than 183,000 weapons, and 
reported that so far, ``virtually every disarmament effort in Haiti has 
failed.''

In the report, Securing Haiti's Transition, the Small Arms Survey group said 
a program of demobilization, disarmament and reintegration ''must be pursued 
assertively'' and coupled with police, judicial, political and economic 
reforms.

''Without the permanent demilitarization of armed groups, humanitarian 
assistance and development will be continuously endangered,'' the report's 
executive summary said. ``Haiti's vicious cycle will thus continue.''

CONTINUAL VIOLENCE

Life in the capital city and some outlying areas has been characterized in 
recent months by armed groups that murder rivals or bystanders, police 
violence against antigovernment protesters, sniper attacks on civilian and 
U.N. targets, and kidnappings.

A Haitian police weekend raid that ended with the deaths of 10 presumed 
gunmen, including two notorious leaders of armed gangs, appears to have 
stemmed the tide of violence a bit. The nightly machine-gun fire that 
capital residents have come to expect was nearly absent on Sunday and 
Monday.

But on Wednesday, as Sardenberg spoke at the Port-au-Prince airport, a high 
school director was kidnapped by armed men in front of his students a couple 
of miles away. Angry students poured out into the streets to protest.

No Haitian official came to the airport to greet the U.N. delegation, which 
met with interim President Alexandre Boniface later Wednesday and was slated 
to meet with a host of officials, politicians and elections officials today 
and Friday.

NOT OPTIMISTIC

But many Haitians seemed skeptical about the outcome of the Security 
Council's visit and even the work of the U.N. peacekeepers.

''The U.N. came in 1995 with a lot of promises for trees and roads and 
disarmament. We never saw any concrete results. Now, 10 years later, they 
are back,'' said author and commentator Michel Soukar.

U.N. forces were deployed to Haiti in 1995 to support the Aristide 
government after U.S. troops had returned him to power following a military 
coup in 1991.

''In the past year we haven't seen any real progress,'' said Soukar, author 
of a number of books on Haitian history, politics and culture. ``I think 
Haitians of all social classes and persuasions would agree.''

The U.N. Security Council seldom meets outside its headquarters in New York. 
The last time it did so was last year, when it met in the Kenyan capital of 
Nairobi to discuss the bloodshed in Sudan's Darfur region.