UN diplomats, on a fun-packed junket to Haiti, say that the Caribbean nation is not getting the job done:

April 20 (Bloomberg) — Haiti’s political leaders aren’t taking steps toward reconciliation needed for successful elections this year and the interim government hasn’t begun reconstruction projects to stabilize the Caribbean nation, U.S. and Brazilian diplomats said.

Anne Patterson, the acting U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who joined Security Council envoys on a mission to Haiti last week, said the government needs to resolve the case of former prime minister Yvon Neptune, an opposition member detained without charges since June 2004.

ééThere is a clear need for national reconciliation,” Patterson told reporters at the UN today. ééSome Security Council members were a little discouraged by meetings with political leaders who seemed in some respects not to have well-thought-out plans for Haiti’s future. It is hard to overcome many years of animosity.”

Brazilian Ambassador Ronaldo Sardenberg, who led the Security Council mission, said that while 380 reconstruction projects have been identified and money for them is available, éénot many” are under way. He said the projects, most involving road building and improved electrical service, are éébeyond the power of the government to implement.”

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, has depended on UN, U.S. and foreign troops for security since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced from power during a February 2004 rebellion. Haiti’s had a history of political instability since declaring independence from France in 1804 after a revolt by half a million black slaves.

Over 7,000 UN Blue-Helmets have taken over for US troops that were sent in to keep order. Meanwhile, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the priest turned president says he wants now to return to power. Such as it is:

He accused the US and France of being party to a “black holocaust” against his supporters.

Aristide, who lives in exile in SA at the cost of South African taxpayers, signalled he would like to rally his supporters and should be given the chance to take up the presidency again to restore order.

This is Aristide’s most detailed political statement since his exile in February last year, and comes amid rising violence in the country, with armed gangs frequently clashing with United Nations (UN) troops.

The UN force was sent after Aristide’s overthrow last year.

Last week a UN delegation ended a four-day visit to the country, during which it pointed to poor progress in restoring peace.

The country is scheduled to hold local elections in early October, and presidential and parliamentary elections in mid-November.

However, the UN has expressed doubt about providing effective security for the poll.

Aristide called yesterday for a delay in elections, saying that his supporters in jail and exile needed to be allowed to return before such a poll could take place.

I remember Aristide in the last days of Baby Doc Duvalier. He struck me then as a man wholey dedicated to his people. It is a tragedy that he has turned into what he most despised. Aristide still maintains that he was kidnapped by the US in a coup d’etat. 10,000 people have died in unrest under his presidency.

HRW is saying that the interim government is contributing to chaos:

“We believe that the failure to bring perpetrators to justice to establish accountability contributes to this climate of impunity, insecurity and lawlessness that prevails now in the country,” said Anna Neistat, a Human Rights Watch official.

Neistat said she visited makeshift detention centers where detainees were being held by former members of Haiti’s disbanded army.

The group said that in almost all of the abuse cases it investigated, Haitian authorities had taken no action to bring those responsible to justice.

Officials with Haiti’s interim government have repeatedly rejected accusations of political persecution and human rights abuses. They blame violence on supporters of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

This article highlights the spiral of violence and retribution that is the legacy of the Duvaliers:

The situation in Haiti continues to deteriorate as the government intimidates, arrests and kills member of Lavalas, Aristide’s party, as revenge for similar killings carried out by Aristide’s government. In October of 2004, the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince called the Ministry of Health demanding emergency vehicles to remove more than 600 corpses that had been deposited there, the result of killings that had taken place in the previous weeks.

On Oct. 28, 2004, the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) expressed concern about arbitrary arrests and detentions of former members of Aristide’s party, as well as other acts of violence and intimidation carried out against human-rights advocates and journalists, including the murder last September of Moleste Lovinsky Bertomieux, host of a daily program on Radio Cara????bes.

An investigation by the Center for the Study of Human Rights of the Miami School of Law carried out in November of 2004 found deplorable conditions and human-rights violations throughout the country. The investigation, headed by Thomas M. Griffin, a former U.S. federal law-enforcement officer, concluded that Haiti’s security and justice institutions fuel the cycle of violence. The report describes with compelling evidence how dead bodies left to rot in the street end up being eaten by dogs and pigs.

Adults are not the only targets of police violence. Child-welfare workers have reported that the rate of beatings and killings of street children has increased five times since the ouster of Aristide. These murders are carried out by the police, death squads and the military. Michael Brewer, director of Haiti Street Kids, Inc., has described how groups of men who belong to the military patrol Port-au-Prince and kill street children “for sport.”

The UN force is being led by Brazil, which is probably the best solution seeing that both the US and France have mucked things up quite nicely. Haiti has a rancid history of rampant abuse and reprisal. Aristide was seen as a hope for the country to make some sort of peace with itself. Unfortunately, he demonstrated himself to be either unable to control the base motives of his constituents or actively promoting retaliation.

In the interim, Aristide has continued to exert control over his party, resulting in a type of stalemate with the government.

From the Miami Herald:

After 200 years of troubled history, though imperfect, the interim government is proving its ability to remain independent from the eventual winners of the upcoming elections. It is not setting itself up to be the selector of the victors. It is laying the groundwork for fair and independent suffrage in Haiti.

The interim government decreed early on that leading members of its administration could not hold elective office in the subsequent government. It created a truly autonomous Provisional Independent Electoral Council. It reached accords with most of the soldiers of the disbanded army, allowing them to lay down their arms, some forming political parties; and, with the help of U.N. troops, it’s vigorously pursuing those who refuse to an swer to government authority.

The perpetrators of violence, too, are experiencing aggressive actions against them. Gone are the days when such actions were decried as human-rights abuses by national and international organizations. The wave of terror carried out by heavily armed street gangs from the slums of Bel Air and Cit???? Soleil has become clear in its intent.

The interim government’s true mandate is to hold credible elections. It is a road fraught with pitfalls and opportunities for failure. It is also the critical path to eventually regaining Haitian self-determination.

This is a failure of the Bush Administration in its own hemisphere. While we applaud and encourage democratic movements around the world, we are ignoring slaughter in our own backyard.