HAITI: NEW PRIME MINISTER GERARD LATORTUE SWEARS IN HIS CABINET AND HAITIANS HAND OVER THEIR WEAPONS TO POLICE AND MULTINATIONAL FORCES

Record ID: 630949

  • Title: HAITI: NEW PRIME MINISTER GERARD LATORTUE SWEARS IN HIS CABINET AND HAITIANS HAND OVER THEIR WEAPONS TO POLICE AND MULTINATIONAL FORCES
  • Date: 17th March 2004
  • Summary: (W1) PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI (MARCH 17, 2004) (REUTERS) WS: EXTERIOR OF PALACE PROSPECTIVE MINISTERS SEATED CLOSE-UP OF MINISTER OF INTERIOR AND SECURITY, HERARD ABRAHAM PRESIDENT BONIFACE ALEXANDRE SEATED WITH PRIME MINISTER GERARD LATORTUE AUDIENCE VARIOUS OF PRESIDENT AND PRIME MINISTER HANDING CREDENTIALS TO MINISTERS (3 SHOTS) PRIME MINISTER LATORTUE AT PODIUM SPEAKING
  • Embargoed: 1st April 2004 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI
  • Country: Haiti
  • Topics: Crime,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA2PTL8DG2US8R4XJ7XH96GCXS9
  • Story Text: Haiti's new government sworn in and Haitians hand over their weapons to police and multinational troops.
    Haiti's new prime minister swore in his cabinet on Wednesday (March 17), but allies of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide were excluded and Aristide supporters and analysts said this threatened reconciliation efforts in the revolt-torn country.
    Aristide has been back in the region since Monday (March 15), on a visit to nearby Jamaica that has enraged the Caribbean country's U.N.-backed authorities because of its potential to stir unrest, but which Jamaica said was a humanitarian gesture made to allow him to see his two daughters.
    Prime Minister Gerard Latortue swore in a new cabinet at the gleaming white National Palace in Port-au-Prince that looms over the capital's squalid slums.
    In a ceremony closely guarded by heavily armed U.S.
    Marines and Special Forces sent to Haiti after the former slum priest's flight into exile on February 29, Latortue gave a speech in which national reconciliation did not figure prominently. He focused instead on fighting corruption and good governance.
    "Our mission won't be easy," said Latortue. "We know it. But our determination is great and we are ready to begin working immediately. We will do the impossible. We are ready. Haiti will live. Have confidence. Viva Haiti! May God bless you."
    As 200 onlookers peered through the green gates of the Palace and Haitian police took positions around a nearby square which has been the scene of recent bloody protests, Latortue called on all parties to work with him.
    The new government includes several members of the groups that led anti-government protests in the months before Aristide's fall, and also ministers with technical experience in international organizations.
    The new cabinet does not directly include members of Aristide's Lavalas party nor representatives of the armed gangs who launched the revolt against Aristide, who were joined by ex-soldiers and former death squad leaders.
    PoliticaI analysts believe high on the priority list for the new ministers will be to persuade the international community to provide funds quickly for welfare projects for the poor. Success in this would strike at the base of Aristide's support and encourage consensus in the deeply-divide country Many slum dwellers are bitterly convinced that Aristide-- who arrived this week from the Central African Republic on a visit to Jamaica, 115 miles (185 km) from Haiti-- was kidnapped in a U.S.-backed coup planned by the country's small elite.
    The new government will run the Americas' poorest country, where more than 200 people have been killed in violence since the anti-Aristide rebellion flared on February 5, until elections can he held.
    Meanwhile, dozens of Canadian troops arrived at Port-au-Prince's International Airport to join an international force led by U.S. Marines.
    Colonel Jim Davis said the troops were not planning to travel to the interior of the country.
    "As best that we know, our mission is strictly confined to Port-au-Prince itself," said Davis. "Because we're very much focused on Port-au-Prince, and certainly in consultation with the Americans very early on in the planning process, we feel the force package that we have committed here is pretty much commensurate with their level command as well on the ground."
    The multinational force in Haiti is estimated at 2,700 troops, including U.S. Marines and soldiers from France, Canada and Chile.
    Also on Wednesday, Haitian police and French troops disarmed residents of one of Haiti's most dangerous neighbourhoods.
    The joint disarmament operation targeted the sprawling slum of Cite Soleil in Port-au-Prince. Officials set up roadblocks to take weapons from residents and gang leaders, who once enforced loyalty to Aristide.
    The conditions of the slum-- where families live in one-room shacks and wooden boards lie across open sewers as footpaths to people's homes-- reveal the rampant poverty in the region.
    "Cite Soleil has a lot of problems," said one Aristide supporter as he prepared to hand over his weapon, "No hospitals working good, no water, no food, no jobs-- that's why the guys kept their guns. Now, we are willing to give all the gun away just to have a chance to get some work."
    The disarmament effort comes days after foreign troops suffered their first casualty, a U.S. Marine who was shot and injured on Sunday (March 14). In response, U.S. Marines raided parts of the capital in a crackdown on gunmen.
    U.S. forces have fought half a dozen battles with Aristide loyalists-- killing six people-- and have had several night time incidents in which they fired upon Haitians since they landed hours after Aristide left the country. Marine Lt. Colonel Dave Lapan recounted the latest overnight episode.
    "Because the vehicle posed a direct threat to their lives, they fired their weapons to disable it, hitting the vehicle in the tires and in the body of the vehicle," said Lapan. "The car crashed into another car. The driver of the vehicle received an injury to his foot and some abrasions from the crash. The people in the other car were not hurt.
    None of the marines in the patrol were injured."
    While the raids have focused on Aristide strongholds and his most militant supporters-- street gangs known in Creole as "chimeres" or ghosts-- a similar effort has not yet targeted the armed rebels who launched the revolt against Aristide.
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