U.S. Pushes U.N. for Faster Handoff in Haiti

The Clinton Administration has begun pressuring the United Nations to allow U.S. forces in Haiti to turn over their peacekeeping responsibilities to U.N. troops in January or February, rather than after Haitian elections later next year, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

U.S. strategists met privately in Washington with senior U.N. officials earlier this week to begin mapping plans for transferring the peacekeeping mission to a 6,000-soldier multinational force, as provided for in the long-range U.S.-U.N. plan for the Caribbean nation.

On Tuesday, a team of three senior U.S. policy-makers, headed by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, spent the day in Port-au-Prince reviewing the security situation with U.S. military commanders and conferring with Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The intensified U.S. push comes in the face of growing congressional pressure--particularly from House and Senate Republicans, who will be in control of Congress starting in January--for a more rapid U.S. withdrawal.

Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), the incoming Senate majority leader, has called for a faster withdrawal of American troops, and Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who is likely to chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has issued similar demands. Some officials are fearful that lawmakers may balk at keeping U.S. troops in Haiti very long.

The timing of elections had been regarded as critical to any transfer of power to the United Nations. Those elections were originally planned for this month, but Aristide pushed them into next year--possibly as late as midsummer. U.N. officials subsequently asked for a similar delay in the troop turnover.

The Administration has been pressing the Aristide government to conduct the elections in February or March and pushing the United Nations to take over the peacekeeping operation before the elections. Security in Haiti is good enough now that the transfer can take place ahead of the balloting, in the Administration’s view.

The two sides already have begun a gradual transfer of power. U.S. officials said that an advance party of the U.N. peacekeeping force, about 500 multinational troops, is scheduled to arrive in Haiti later this month.

And the Pentagon announced Tuesday that it will begin rotating units of the 10th Mountain Division from Haiti later this month, replacing them with 3,500 soldiers of the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division, who are to become part of the new U.N. force.

The United States now has 6,852 ground troops in Haiti, down from a peak of more than 21,000.

The United States and United Nations have agreed to assemble a multinational force of about 6,000 troops to replace the current U.S.-run mission. The United Nations wants about half the troops to be Americans, while the United States has been trying to limit its share to one-third. A U.S. Army officer, Gen. Hugh Shelton, has been designated commander of the U.N. force.