UN Council to agree to deploy more troops, police to Haiti - Summary

New York - The UN Security Council planned to approve quickly a request for additional military troops and police to bolster the UN mission in Haiti, which has assumed a leading role in the relief of earthquake survivors, diplomats said Monday. The 15-nation council may adopt a resolution as early as Tuesday in response to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's request for 2,000 more military troops and 1,500 police to be deployed in Haiti to provide security and assist in the massive relief operation there.

The UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) currently has about 7,000 troops and 2,000 international police. The mission also employed about 3,000 other civilian personnel and Haitians.

The ambassadors of France and the United States confirmed the council was preparing a new resolution that would also strengthen MINUSTAH's mandate.

French UN Ambassador Gerard Araud said the increasing foreign military presence in Haiti is aimed at supporting the government of President Rene Preval and not to supplant it because Port-au-Prince has been weakened by the massive destruction and the government cabinet has suffered heavy losses in personnel.

"Our job is not to take over (the government), but to support it," said Araud, whose government in Paris is planning an international conference in Montreal for the reconstruction of Haiti.

Araud said French President Nicolas Sarkozy had been discussing the conference with Washington and Toronto.

"We are cooperating with a sovereign country," Araud said. He said the European Union's foreign ministers, who met in Brussels on Monday, had decided to send more police to Haiti and pledged some 575 million dollars in aid.

US Ambassador Alejandro Wolff said several countries have already offered military troops and police, but details about troops contribution were being handle by the UN peacekeeping department.

John Holmes, the top UN humanitarian coordinator, who visited Port-au-Prince on Sunday with Ban, said the request for additional troops and police is aimed at filling the gap when MINUSTAH will be required to shift its current staff around in Haiti. There already 3,000 UN peacekeepers in Port-au-Prince for security and to assist the relief operation.

"It's not just a matter of shortage (of personnel)," Holmes said. "It's a question of precaution to ensure that we will have what we need in the medium term as well."

Holmes said the relief operation in Port-au-Prince has scaled up tremendously this past weekend with the World Food Program having distributed ready-to-eat food rations for seven days to 73,000 Haitians.

He said more food supplies and other relief materials were coming to the capital as the airport was functioning better with the help of the United States. UN diplomats said the airport can now handle 100 flights a day on Sunday, compared to 60 on Saturday.

Holmes said the distribution of relief supplies will rely entirely on land transport, which meant that Haiti would need more trucks and that more roads will have to be cleared of debris from collapsed buildings. Holmes pointed out that fuel supply remained a problem and that the Dominican Republic has facilitated the trucking of relief supplies through its territory to Haiti.

Ban told reporters at UN headquarters in New York after returning from Sunday's visit to Haiti that the humanitarian conditions and demands there are the largest in decades for the international community.

"The Haitian people need to know that today is better than yesterday and this year better than last year," Ban said.

Ban visited Port-au-Prince on Sunday for a first-hand look at the destruction in the Haitian capital where tens of thousands of people may have died in the magnitude-7 earthquake.

"I went to Haiti with a very heavy heart," Ban said, admitting that he had mixed feelings because of the atmosphere of deep desperation and the elation whenever a survivor was retrieved from the rubble.

He said the UN suffered its biggest-ever loss in personnel in Haiti. The chief of MINUSTAH Hedi Annabi, his deputy Luiz Carlos da Costa and the acting police chief Doug Coates were killed in the main UN compound that collapsed on Tuesday.

UN spokesman Martin Nesirky confirmed 46 UN staff have been killed and over 500 still unaccounted for. The high number of unaccounted included also locally hired people who may be with families and have not reported to work since the quake struck.

"I was sadden by what I saw and yet I saw the faces of the Haitians, who were calm and patient," Ban said. He said the UN does not know how many UN staff remain buried in the rubble.

But Nesirky said it appeared that the telephone network has been working again, which would facilitate communication among UN offices and personnel.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/304484,un-council-to-agree-to-deploy-more-troops-police-to.html.