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Haitian lawmakers propose new security (Military) force to tackle insecurity to replace the outgunned police force

The Associated Press

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2006

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti Legislators have proposed creating a new security force to bolster Haiti's outgunned police ? raising the possibility of reinstating the Caribbean country's notorious and disbanded military, an official said Tuesday.

The force would be trained by Haitian and foreign security experts, and could take control of guarding the country's coasts and it's porous border with the Dominican Republic, said Sen. Youri Latortue, president of the Senate commission on public safety.

"Haiti needs a force to be able to protect the country," Latortue told The Associated Press in an interview. "We think that it's the first step in (restoring) security because if our borders aren't protected, anyone can come to Haiti and do what they want."

Funds to study the new force were included in a draft national budget agreed upon by lawmakers this week, Latortue said. President Rene Preval must approve the budget before sending it back to Parliament for a final vote expected later this week.

Daily kidnappings, killings and other violence has fueled debate over the need for a security force to support Haiti's ill-equipped police, which has 4,000 officers to serve a population of 8 million.

An 8,800-strong U.N. peacekeeping force currently provides the only real security in the impoverished nation, which is still reeling from a violent uprising that toppled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004.

Latortue, the nephew and former security chief of ex-interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, said he and other colleagues support a new force to replace Haiti's demobilized military, although other lawmakers have said they favor a national police force.

Aristide dismantled the military in 1995, after a U.S. military intervention restored him to power following the 1991 coup that first ousted him.

The 1990-1994 military coup regime is blamed for the murders, rapes, maimings and torture of thousands of Aristide supporters, and today's former soldiers include convicted murderers.

Latortue said anyone convicted of human rights abuses should be barred from joining any future security force.

"We are not going to have people who violated human rights in the past. We are going to have some new elements," said Latortue, who has denied alleged links to drug and arms trafficking.

The government offered no immediate reaction to the proposed force. Before taking power in May, Preval expressed support for creating a police force similar to that of France's national force, but stopped short of saying he would favor reinstating the armed forces.