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Haiti police force best for security: United Nations
Haiti’s national police force is the best body for providing security in this poor nation and the government should concentrate on building up the force, a senior U.S. diplomat said Thursday.
Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, commented on behalf of her U.N. Security Council colleagues as they wrapped up a four-day visit to meet with senior Haitian officials and view U.N. operations in Haiti.
The U.N. focus on strengthening the understaffed national police is almost certain to complicate President Michel Martelly’s push to restore Haiti’s army, which was disbanded in 1995 because of its involvement in coups and history of abuse.
The Haitian government, its international partners and the U.N. peacekeeping force “have invested in building the Haitian National Police as the body that can best provide daily protection for the Haitian people,” Rice said at a news conference. “The goal has been set to increase it in the next five, three to five years, to another 15,000, 16,000 and perhaps more beyond that.”
Rice said the U.N. peacekeeping force will remain focused on increasing officer levels, “because that is the institution that exists, that is under way and has the best prospect in the near term of being capable of playing the (security) role” shared by peacekeepers and Haitian police.
The United States, Canada and other countries have said Haiti should devote its limited resources to building the police force, which has just 8,000 officers in a country of 10 million people, and to rebuilding from the 2010 earthquake.
Martelly argues that a new army is needed to patrol borders and protect the environment.
