The UN Security Council extended for one year this Monday morning, September 30, the multinational mission to aid the Haitian police, the MMAS, the force which is led by Kenya. The Kenyan president announced last week to deploy 600 additional men by the end of November, while Jamaica, Belize and the Bahamas have also committed to sending troops on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. On the other hand, the Council does not officially ask the Secretary General to consider transforming the MMAS into a UN Peacekeeping Operation.
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With our correspondent in New York, Carrie Nooten
Finally, the resolution requesting the renewal of the mandate of the MMAS for one year was voted unanimously by the 15 members of the Council this morning, but one idea was abandoned in writing: that of considering its transformation into a maintenance operation of peace under the auspices of the United Nations. This upset Beijing and Moscow.
And since this was officially requested by Haiti in the General Assembly, American diplomats deemed it unnecessary to make it a sticking point and omitted it from the text. This call was also reiterated by the Haitian ambassador Antonio Rodrigue.
His Kenyan counterpart argued that stability in Haiti could only be ensured once the root causes were resolved, with the illicit trade in arms from the United States, despite the embargo, remaining one of the red spots.
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