Reprinted from Caribbean Net News
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Haitian gangs agree to give up their weapons

Friday, August 18, 2006

by: Joseph Guyler Delva

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters): Armed gangs in Haiti's largest slum pledged on Thursday to hand over their weapons to the government next week, heeding President Rene Preval's call for a peaceful disarmament.

The move came a week after Preval and Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis demanded that the gangs surrender their weapons or risk being killed.

William Baptiste, a gang leader known as Ti Blan, said the gangs in Cite Soleil, a teeming seaside slum outside the capital, would give up their weapons at a ceremony next week.

"We are going to hand over our weapons to the constitutional government on Monday because we want peace," Ti Blan, a spokesman for the gangs in Cite Soleil, told Reuters.

"The use of those weapons only leads to violence and that's not what the society needs," said Ti Blan.

He urged the government to disarm all armed groups, including those linked to Haiti's small but wealthy elite and to political foes of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The gangs in Cite Soleil, which is home to thousands of Aristide supporters, were mostly responsible for violence aimed at destabilizing the U.S.-backed interim government installed after Aristide was ousted from power on Feb. 29, 2004.

The gangs said they took up arms against the interim government to protect themselves and slum residents against repeated attacks by the Haitian police and U.N. peacekeepers.

Past attempts to disarm the gangs have failed or have produced only a few weapons.

Preval, a former Aristide protégé, won elections in February and took office in May.

"We held those weapons to protect ourselves and our communities from the interim government which was our enemy," Ti Blan said. "Now, since we don't consider Preval's administration an enemy, there is no more justification for us to keep those weapons."

The U.N. sent its peacekeeping force -- now numbering about 8,000 soldiers and police -- to restore order shortly after Aristide was pushed from office by an armed rebellion.

The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday renewed the mission for another six months.

The gangs said they had invited media and diplomats to witness the weapons handover to Haitian authorities and representatives of the Demobilization, Disarmament and Reinsertion program, run by the United Nations.

Several other gangs are expected to make the same move in the coming days, said a government official, who did not want to be named.

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