Members of the UN Security Council were concluding a visit to Haiti yesterday after days of bloody fighting between peacekeepers, police and heavily armed gangs that drove home the challenge of trying to bring peace to the poorest country in the Americas.
As council members concluded their four-day fact-finding trip, UN peacekeepers and Haitian police waged an hour-long gunbattle Friday in a maze-like seaside slum. The fighting killed at least five -- and perhaps as many as 10 -- suspects described as members of an armed band loyal to deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, UN officials said.
Among the dead, UN officials said, was a suspect in the fatal shooting Thursday of a Filipino peacekeeper, the third UN casualty in the year-old mission to stabilize Haiti.
Security Council members said it was likely they would increase the number of UN civilian police in Haiti when they vote next month to expand the mission's mandate past its June expiration.
staunching violence
Meanwhile, outside observers said aggressive moves by UN forces in recent months had not yet staunched the violence.
Dozens of people die monthly from attacks largely by criminal gangs in Port-au-Prince, said Anna Neistat, co-author of a new Human Rights Watch report critical of the UN and Haiti's interim government.
"In recent months and weeks, violence in the capital has become the No. 1 problem," she said. "It takes lives every single day."
UN officials have claimed recent victories against armed gangs, and promised more action against gun-toting militants in coming days.
The clashes come as some diplomats and politicians said Haiti has made little progress in preparing for fall elections and needs more funding to lay the groundwork for the vote.
The UN Security Council met with leaders of various political groups Friday, and participants said Haitian politicians expressed frustration with UN efforts to assure safe and free elections more than a year after Aristide was overthrown.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan learned "with great dismay and sadness" of the death of the UN peacekeeper from the Philippines on Thursday and shares "the indignation" expressed by Security Council members visiting Haiti, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York.
resolve
Annan condemns all violence against UN personnel and reiterates the UN mission's resolve "to continue to work toward the establishment of a peaceful environment in Haiti," Eckhard said.
The Filipino staff sergeant, a 22-year army veteran, died when gunfire erupted during an operation to cordon off Cite Soleil.
More than 400 people have died since September in clashes among pro- and anti-Aristide street gangs, police, peacekeepers and ex-soldiers who helped oust Aristide.
Security Council members also toured the northern cities of Gonaives and Cap-Haitien on Friday.
UN soldiers said the security situation had improved in Gonaives, where peacekeepers were consumed with relief work after September floods that killed nearly 2,000 people. There have been less than half a dozen minor attacks on peacekeepers in Gonaives this year, soldiers said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion