Haiti Asks U.N. to Extend Mission While New Police Force Is Installed

Although all U.S. troops will pull out of the country by the end of February, Haiti is asking for other elements of the U.N. peacekeeping mission to remain for six more months because its new police force is still not ready to maintain order.

The request for an extension came from the office of President-elect Rene Preval a week ago, after U.S. officials testified before Congress that they suspect some members of the police force of taking part in political violence.

The United States is supporting the extension.

“We want to make sure that the slow transition to Haitian security is accomplished without a big vacuum,” said a U.S. diplomat at the United Nations.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the former foreign minister of Algeria who heads the U.N. mission in Haiti, insisted that the remaining peacekeepers can do the job of maintaining order. But he said he will regret the withdrawal of the U.S. troops because Haitians feel more secure with them around.

“From a perception point of view, it is a pity,” he said in a phone interview from Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital. “America is the big neighbor, a big country in the world. The Americans were casting a big shadow here.”

But President Clinton promised Congress that the U.S. troops would be out by the end of February, and the White House, faced with skepticism over the timing of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission to Bosnia, was in no mood to remain longer than intended in Haiti.

Although Preval will not succeed his political ally, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, as president until Feb. 7, the United Nations is treating as official his request for an extension.

U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali is expected to ask the Security Council to approve the request within a week or two.

Brahimi said the decision to retain U.N. peacekeepers after the Americans leave will give confidence to the new police force and comfort to the population.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission of 5,500 troops and 900 civilian police officers, which succeeded the U.S.-led intervention force last March, will lose its American component of 2,400 troops by Feb. 29.

In addition to the 900 police officers, the mission will be left with 1,000 troops from Bangladesh, 850 from Pakistan, 500 from Canada and 750 from more than half a dozen other countries.

It is not clear, however, how many will be asked to remain under a six-month extension.

Haitian police enforcement and justice have come under critical scrutiny in Congress lately, with House Republicans suspecting a Haitian government hand in political violence and an attempt by Aristide to stack the new police force with his supporters.

At a hearing of the House International Relations Committee earlier this month, officials of the State and Justice departments testified that the FBI had been stymied in its investigation of the murder last year of Mireille Durocher Bertin, a political opponent of Aristide.

*

Although Aristide approved the FBI investigation, the officials testified, so many conditions were imposed on the questioning of suspects in the government that the agents gave up trying and returned to Washington.

The prime suspect--Interior Minister Mondesir Beaubrun--was among those never questioned, Bill Perry, the deputy assistant director of the FBI, testified.

James Dobbins, the State Department’s special coordinator for Haiti, was asked if the U.S. government had received any information that members of Aristide’s palace guard were implicated in political acts of violence, including killings.

“Yes,” Dobbins replied, “and also members of the police.”

The Clinton administration has been trying to mold the new police force into a model of efficiency and impartiality in a country where the police traditionally have served as the brutal arm of tyrannical governments.

Under a special program largely run and funded by the United States, cadets have been put through special courses in the United States and at a police academy in Port-au-Prince.

So far, the academy has trained 3,500 cadets, and 1,500 more are due to graduate by the end of February.

Aristide, however, has added 1,400 new police officers, including 800 former refugees who were trained hurriedly as auxiliary police, special units such as the palace guard and 100 former officers of the Haitian armed forces. None of these have undergone the selection process or the special training of the cadets.

*

To show its displeasure with Aristide and with Clinton administration policy toward Haiti, the House committee decided to block $5 million in funds for the police academy, an act that threatens to close it down.

But State Department officials pleaded that withholding the funds would only make the situation worse by halting the training of the carefully selected cadets.

The argument made some headway, and the committee decided Thursday to free $2.5 million of the funds. Chairman Benjamin A. Gilman (R-N.Y.) said the rest of the money will be released when Haiti screens out criminals and human rights violators from those added to the police force.