UN to Vote on Sending More Troops for Haiti Aid

Andres R. Martinez and William Varner

Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The United Nations Security Council is set to vote today on sending 2,000 more troops and 1,500 extra police to Haiti as forces on the ground struggle to keep order and speed delivery of food, water and medicine.

“Haiti requires a massive response from the international community,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said in New York yesterday. “The people need to see that today is better than yesterday, and that the future will be better than the past.”

The UN, whose Haitian offices were destroyed in the 7- magnitude quake Jan. 12, has more than 9,000 troops and officers in Haiti. At least 46 UN staffers died in the disaster, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

Aid workers face scattered street violence, fueled in part by shortages of food and medical supplies in the capital Port- au-Prince, a city of about 3 million people. The quake, which may have killed more than 100,000 people, damaged roads, and the port and toppled the control tower at the country’s only international airport, hampering efforts to get relief supplies moving.

The U.S. expected to have 7,000 troops in Haiti and offshore as of yesterday, providing medical care, security and operating the airport.

Brazilian Contingent

Brazil, which had the largest number of soldiers in Haiti in the UN’s peacekeeping forces, is ready to double its 1,266- strong contingent if asked, General Enza Peri, the army’s commander, said yesterday in a news conference in Brasilia.

Alain LeRoy, the head of UN peacekeeping operations, told reporters yesterday at the UN that the neighboring Dominican Republic has pledged to send 800 soldiers to Haiti. The European Union will send some police units, he said.

The main task for the additional soldiers will be escorting relief convoys to 200 distribution points in the capital, LeRoy said. Relief corridors are being set up from the Dominican Republic and ports in northern Haiti to Port-au-Prince, he said.

LeRoy said that while there has been violence “here and there, most due to frustration,” the situation is “generally calm.”

Spain will send a warship to Haiti, El Pais reported. The ship, which will arrive at the beginning of next month, will have a 190-member crew and a hospital on board, the newspaper reported. Spain is also considering sending engineers and guards to help with reconstruction, the newspaper said.

Airport Capacity Doubled

The number of flights the single-runway airport can handle almost doubled yesterday to 100 after the U.S. took control, the White House said in a statement. The U.S. is giving priority to planes carrying relief supplies, said John Holmes, UN emergency relief coordinator.

Doctors Without Borders medical teams are stymied by bottlenecks at the airport that have stretched out by two days the expected time for delivery of supplies, said Benoit Leduc, operations manager for Haiti, in a conference call yesterday with journalists from Port-au-Prince.

People are dying and infections, curable with antibiotics, are leading to amputations instead, he said. The organization has five facilities now, three of which have surgical capabilities, he said.

The organization has treated more than 3,000 patients, and performed 500 operations with 165 international workers and 550 locals. Another 48 doctors from abroad are on the way.

‘Behind Pace’

Doctors Without Borders is trying to reach areas outside the capital that have suffered destruction and often are accessible only by helicopter, Leduc said.

“We’re behind pace,” he said of the group’s overall operations. “It’s really a race.”

Looting in downtown Port-au-Prince was “widespread,” CNN reported yesterday. One U.S. citizen died in an “incident,” Agence France-Presse said, citing a military spokesman.

U.S. Rear Admiral Michael Rogers, director of intelligence for the Joints Chiefs of Staff, told reporters yesterday looting had been “isolated” and wasn’t impeding aid from getting through.

Haitian President Rene Preval said that international aid to his country, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, has been “quick, concrete and massive.” The nation, with an economy of about $7 billion, was in a “difficult” situation before and needs institutional changes and economic development, he said in an interview with Venezuela’s government-funded Telesur television network.

In London, European Union President Herman Van Rompuy said the EU should set up a rapid reaction force to better deal with humanitarian crises.

“We have to reflect afterwards about a better instrument for reacting,” Van Rompuy said today. “But that’s for later, first things first, we need to do everything we can to help the people of Haiti.”