Annan names Brazilian to head UN force in Haiti

Thursday,  January 19, 2006

BRASILIA, Brazil (AFP): UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has named Brazilian General Jose Elito Carvalho Siqueira to head the UN force in Haiti, after his predecessor committed suicide, officials here said.

Annan offered Siqueira the post with the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, or MINUSTAH, during a meeting in New York, according to a joint statement by Brazil's foreign and defense ministries, issued late Tuesday.

"Brazil reiterates its commitment to solidarity with Haiti and to the recovery of democratic institutions and social and economic development for the Haitian people," the statement said.

Siqueira, 59, heads the 6th Military Region, based in Salvador, capital of the northeastern state of Bahia.

The late Brazilian General Urano Teixeira da Matta Bacellar led the UN force in Haiti until he was found dead of a gunshot wound in his hotel room in Port-au-Prince on January 7.

Investigators concluded the death was a suicide. Bacellar was given military honors in the Brazilian capital and was later buried in Rio de Janeiro.

MINUSTAH, meanwhile, has faced mounting criticism over its attempts to establish order in the country.

Several hundred Haitians held a sit-in Monday outside the UN headquarters in Port-au-Prince to demand improved safety.

Two Jordanian peacekeepers died and a third was wounded in clashes with armed assailants in the Haitian capital on Tuesday, heightening tensions three weeks before the country's presidential election.

Nine soldiers in the UN force, four of them Jordanians, have been killed since MINUSTAH was deployed in June 2004, four months after President Jean Bertrand Aristide fled a popular uprising.

On top of increasing violence, uncertainty in the poorest nation in the Americas has mounted as the long-awaited election to find a replacement for Aristide has been postponed four times.

Jordan and some other countries have criticized Brazil's leadership of the UN force, according to military analysts and press reports. Jordan has contributed the largest number of soldiers, 1,500, to the mission.

Due to its cost and questions about its effectiveness, the mission is also controversial in Brazil, which has 1,200 soldiers in the force.

Brazil's foreign ministry defended MINUSTAH, saying "considerable progress" had been achieved since it began working in Haiti.

"The chaos in the country was contained and the activity of illegal armed groups is almost completely restricted to one neighborhood of Port au Prince: Cite Soleil," it said.

MINUSTAH began its mission in June 2004 after the withdrawal of French and US troops who entered the country to rein in an armed rebellion that sent Aristide into exile in February of that year.

In June 2005, the UN Security Council extended MINUSTAH's mission to February 15, 2006. But it is certain to be extended again since that date now falls in the middle of Haiti's electoral calendar, which calls for first and second round voting on February 7 and March 19.

Envoys of countries supporting Haiti's transition will be in Port au Prince Thursday and Friday to "insist" that elections, already postponed four times, go ahead as scheduled, Brazilian Assistant Secretary for South America Jose Eduardo Felicio said.

The "Core Group for Haiti" comprises Brazil, the United States, France, Canada and Argentina.

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