Spanish
Santo Domingo.- President Luis Abinader said this Monday he "believed" that the United Nations (UN) would "extend" the Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti (MSS) until the end of the year and gave his support to the United States proposal to turn it into a force of 5,500 troops to directly combat the armed gangs that terrorize that country.
The Dominican ruler spoke thus on the eve of the United Nations Security Council discussing the future of the MSS, whose mandate expires on October 2. The proposal by the United States is seconded by Panama.
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"The UN has a plan that I believe would extend the Mission in Haiti until the end of the year (...). We support the special mission proposed by the United States both publicly and privately. The troops led by Kenya are only about seven hundred soldiers, when in principle they should total 2,500", Abinader pointed out. The Dominican head of state assured, in his usual Monday meeting with the media, that those soldiers in Haiti do not directly combat the Haitian gangs, but rather limit themselves to guarding government and private installations and institutions. Abinader affirmed that the Armed Forces of his country maintain control of the Dominican part of the border with Haiti and reiterated that he will not allow Haitian gangs to breach the territorial defense. Last Thursday, the president of Haiti's Presidential Transition Council (CPT), Laurent Saint-Cyr, called on the international community at the UN General Assembly to act "strongly and immediately" in the face of the serious crisis suffered by his country, which, he said, is experiencing a war between gangs and the population. In a speech denouncing the dramatic situation Haiti is going through, where half the population suffers from food insecurity, Saint-Cyr pointed out that "silence is not an option." The mandate of the Multinational Security Support (MSS) Mission in Haiti, led by Kenya, concludes in three days in a climate of growing uncertainty in the country, mired in a crisis that is only exacerbated by the violence imposed by the bloody armed gangs that control 90% of the capital of this impoverished nation. The first contingent of the MSS arrived in Port-au-Prince on June 25th of last year, but fifteen months later the mission has not managed to regain any territory controlled by the gangs, despite the various and multiple operations against their leaders, whose actions have caused the internal displacement of more than 1.3 million people.
