Argentina, Brazil to keep troops in Haiti on UN peacekeeping mission

Leaders of Argentina and Brazil said on Monday that the two countries would keep their troops in Haiti as part of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Caribbean nation.

Rene Preval, president-elect of Haiti, who is visiting Buenos Aires, held talks with Argentine President Nestor Kirchner on Monday, before speaking to the press, alongside senior Argentine ministers, who promised to continue supporting Haiti.

Haiti needs the presence of the UN peacekeeping mission, said Preval, who arrived in Argentina on Monday, as part of a tour of Latin America.

Argentina will keep its peacekeeping troops in Haiti, reaffirmed Kirchner. Preval began his tour on Friday in Brazil, which supplies 1,200 troops to the UN mission. During a meeting with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Haitian president-elect aid that Haiti's situation would soon turn difficult without Brazil's support.

Lula on Monday responded with a promise to keep its troops in Haiti, as part of the UN peacekeeping mission, for as long as Haiti's government wants.

"We serve the will of the United Nations, and we are subordinate to the national will of the Haitian people... (and) to the government of Haiti," Lula told listeners to his weekly show Coffee with the President. "When they say 'we want no more' we will return to Brazil with our consciences clear and the knowledge of a job well done," he said.

Preval, an ally of deposed former-president Jean Bertrand Aristide, won February elections as the candidate of the Lespwa (Hope) Party, following two years of political and social chaos in the Caribbean nation.

Also in February, the United Nations Security Council voted to extend the UN mission by six months, until the beginning of Preval's rule.

Source: Xinhua