Ousted Chilean diplomat named as new UN envoy for Haiti
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
UNITED NATIONS (AFP): The Chilean UN
ambassador who was recalled last year after irking the United States with his
outspoken opposition in the run-up to the Iraq war was named Monday as the new
UN envoy to Haiti. Juan Gabriel Valdes, who
had previously served as Chile's foreign minister, was sent back to his
homeland in June in the wake of complaints from the United States and then-war
ally Spain on the UN Security Council. At the
peak of the UN debate before the war was launched, a Chilean newspaper
reported that Valdes had said he would resign if his government ordered him to
vote in favour of the war on the council. A
spokesman at the US mission to the United Nations on Monday declined to
comment on the appointment. The world body
has not had a permanent envoy to Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas,
since March 2000, when the last UN peacekeeping mission there was closed down,
UN spokesman Farhan Haq said. The Security
Council authorised a new peacekeeping mission for Haiti in February, the same
day that Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide resigned and fled the
country in the face of a popular uprising.
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