UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki-moon said he would recommend peacekeepers stay in Haiti for at least another year and urged world donors to redouble efforts to ensure the impoverished nation does not backslide into chaos.
In his first visit to the country on Wednesday, Ban credited an 8,800-strong peacekeeping force, known as Minustah, with restoring security following a violent 2004 revolt but said Haitian President Rene Preval still needed help bringing jobs and development to the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation.
"The international community must not step aside and let spoilers jeopardize Haiti's progress," Ban told reporters during a joint news conference with Preval at Haiti's National Palace.
The UN force was deployed to Haiti after a revolt toppled former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and plunged the former French colony of 8 million people into crisis. Backed by Preval, peacekeepers this year concluded a fierce crackdown on armed gangs that has led to a dramatic reduction in violence in Port-au-Prince's vast, fetid slums.
But Ban said the situation was fragile and that he would ask the UN Security Council to extend the mandate for another 12 months when it expires in October.
Preval said he supported keeping UN troops in the country for now and urged his countrymen not to oppose the force out of nationalism.
"The population has benefited from the presence of Minustah," Preval said. "What is good for the country is for the UN to help us reinforce our police and our security. As time goes on, we'll evaluate what form this assistance should take and how long it should last."
Ban praised Preval for taking a stand against corruption and seeking much-needed reforms to the police, judiciary and prison system. He is expected to ask the Security Council for more specialized forces such as naval units to help the Caribbean country guard its coastline from weapons and drug traffickers.
Despite the improved security, UN officials said gangs, drug trafficking and poverty were still a threat to the country and that peacekeepers would be needed at least until Preval's term ends in 2011.
UN peacekeepers provide 85 percent of Haiti's security needs, but the government is working to eventually take over. The national police academy is preparing hundreds of recruits to bolster the nation's 6,000-police force.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees