U.N. Operation Said To Be Key To Haiti Revival

UNITED NATIONS — An ambitious U.N. operation against local gangsters in Haiti has become an integral part of the country's political and economic recovery efforts, opponents and supporters say.

Opponents are condemning what they say is the loss of Haitian sovereignty that the operation, which a U.N. force launched last Friday in a gang-ridden part of Port au Prince, entails. But supporters say the use of international troops is necessary to stabilize countries where lawlessness threatens national institutions.

"It's like Iraq," the Haitian ambassador to Washington, Raymond Joseph, told The New York Sun yesterday, comparing the complete dismantling of the Iraqi army in 2003 to that of the Haitian armed forces during the 1994 coup.

"You create a vacuum, and what happens?" he said. "You have to fill it. In the case of Haiti, just as in the case of Iraq, it was filled by gangsters, by insurgents and whatnot."

Today, the Security Council is expected to extend the mandate of the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti, known as Minustah, until October. Last Friday, Minustah launched one of the most ambitious police operations ever undertaken by a U.N. peacekeeping force.

Seven hundred Minustah troops, along with a small local police force, entered an area in the neighborhood of Cité Soleil, seizing rifles and ammunition. The raid, which came in response to a record number of kidnappings for ransom, was the toughest yet since December, when the U.N. force, under a new Brazilian commander, launched an attempt to gain control of the crime-ridden neighborhood.

"Under no circumstances can Minustah troops accept that the local population should be victims of armed violence," the commander, Major General Carlos Alberto Dos Santos Cruz, told reporters yesterday.

Supporters of the exiled former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, say the U.N. operation represents a loss of Haitian sovereignty. But Mr. Joseph, a former columnist for the Sun, dismissed such statements, saying, "Those same people invited troops back in 1994" in an effort to boost Mr. Aristide's regime.

Other critics of the United Nations's muscular approach say no military action can succeed without reform of the police and judicial system, in which gang leaders and drug dealers control many judges.

"What is needed is a bold democratic national strategy to reform the police and judicial system involving a broad spectrum of Haitian society," a Haitian representative of the nongovernmental organization Action Aid, Raphael Yves Pierre, said.

"What are we to do, wait until we create a justice system before we deal with the gangsters?" Mr. Joseph said. "We might not have time to build a justice system. I think the two go together."

In addition to cooperating with Minustah, the Haitian government is planning to start a "decentralization" campaign, advertising areas outside the politically tense capital in the hope of attracting tourism, Mr. Joseph added.