UN peacekeepers chief in Haiti found dead

General Urano Texeira da Matta Bacellar. Picture / Reuters

The Brazilian general in charge of United Nations peacekeepers in Haiti has been found dead on the balcony of his hotel suite with a bullet through his head.

He was found wearing only underpants and a white vest with his pistol still in his hand.

The general had been alone in his suite and suicide is presumed, according to UN officials and Haitian police.

But in the land of voodoo spells and zombies, and more recently violent political and gang killings, the death of General Urano Texeira da Matta Bacellar, 58, has rattled the international community.

He was described by colleagues as an extremely religious, happily-married man with two children he adored, and a soldier used, in 39 years of service, to pressure far worse than he had seen in his four months in Haiti.

He apparently put his gun to his mouth, in the luxury hilltop Montana hotel used by senior UN officials, diplomats and the world media, on the eve of what was supposed to be Haiti's crucial presidential and legislative election.

A few days before he died, the elections had been postponed for the fourth time amid daily killings and kidnappings which have spiralled since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced into exile under US pressure nearly two years ago.

Gen. Bacellar commanded 7,265 troops of the UN Stabilization Mission, known by its French acronym, MINUSTAH, and comprising soldiers from 20 nations, the majority from Brazil and Jordan.

They were deployed to restore security as supporters and opponents of Aristide fought street battles in the wake of the ousted President's departure.

But Gen. Bacellar and previous heads of the mission had been criticised by many Haitians for restricting the role of the UN troops, failing to root out corrupt Haitian police and demobbed Haitian soldiers, and declining to go into the seething slum areas of Port-au-Prince to flush out the armed gangs behind the spate of kidnappings.

The slums are no-go areas for the Haitian police.

When the UN troops have gone in, and even when they have not, they have suffered casualties - six dead last year alone, the last of them a Canadian soldier near the Cite Soleil slum, a pro-Aristide stronghold, just before Christmas.

Police say there are now 10-12 kidnappings a day on average, meaning Haiti has overtaken Colombia in the statistics.

They usually involve ransom demands which may seem relatively small - thousands or tens of thousands of dollars - but those figures are a fortune in the impoverished Caribbean nation where most earn less than 60p ($1.06) a day.

Nowadays, the trip from the airport to downtown Port-au-Prince is extremely dangerous and few people venture out of their neighbourhoods after dark.

Amnesty International says the slums, notably the one-square-mile landfill known as Cite Soleil (Sun City) and home to 250,000 people with no toilets other than the earth, are "awash" with small arms, often sold off by Haitian police or former soldiers of the now-disbanded army.

Amnesty has called on the UN to strive for total disarmament of all civilians.

Some Haitian politicians have accused soldiers from some of the UN mission countries of arming or aiding gangs in return for pay-offs.

A MINUSTAH spokesman described this as nonsense.

As he sat on his hotel balcony at dawn on Saturday, Gen. Bacellar may also have been pondering a general strike scheduled for today, in protest against what some political leaders call the "inactivity" of the UN mission and calling on the blue-helmeted troops to take tougher action against the gunmen and kidnappers.

The General had insisted that his job was to defend the Haitian constitution, but not to fight crime.

Many Western diplomats beg to differ, saying the UN mission's mandate gives them carte blanche to go up against the kidnappers and other gunmen in pursuit of peace and security.

The day before Gen. Bacellar died, the UN Security Council urged Haitian politicians to get their act together and organise elections by February 7, the 20th anniversary of the overthrow of dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

But on the eve of what was supposed to be today's election, half of the 3.5 million registered voters had not received voter identity cards and few had any idea where their polling station would be.

Worse still, few were prepared to venture out to the polls unless their security were guaranteed.

Yesterday, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said his troops would remain in Haiti despite Gen. Bacellar's death.

The UN appointed the General's deputy in the mission, Gen. Eduardo Aldunate Herman of Chile, to take over.

- INDEPENDENT