April 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.