Regional leaders push Haiti to end rights abuses

Haiti's government must do more to push national reconciliation before November elections by freeing political prisoners and ending rights abuses now that U.N. peacekeepers are restoring stability, regional leaders said on Wednesday. The leaders, addressing a U.N. Security Council debate on the impoverished Caribbean nation, also pressed world governments to turn over more of the development aid they promised at an international donors conference last July. The United States, European Union, World Bank and others agreed at the conference to pour more than $1 billion into Haiti over the next two years. But due in part to the lack of security, donors have been slow to fulfill their pledges. A U.N. peacekeeping mission was sent to help bring stability to Haiti after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced from power following a bloody revolt in February 2004. U.N. peacekeepers have made "lots of progress in terms of security, but people in their day-to-day life want to see progress in terms of infrastructure, removing the garbage, creating hospitals, and so on," said Chilean Foreign Minister Ignacio Walker. "We cannot permit ourselves to decrease the level of priority Haiti has assumed in the international agenda," Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told the council.[more]

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