Uruguay to withdraw its UN peacekeepers from Haiti
Oct 30, 2013, 2:11 AM
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) – Uruguay’s president says he plans to remove his country’s nearly 1,000 peacekeeping troops from Haiti.
Jose Mujica said Tuesday he’ll withdraw the contingent but isn’t giving a date. He told local TV that he decided this because there’s a “political impasse” in Haiti with elections to renew the Senate long overdue.
The 9,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti was established by the U.N. Security Council in 2004.
The force has been under intense scrutiny for years and is blamed for a cholera outbreak likely introduced by a peacekeeping battalion from Nepal.
Last year, protesters calling for the withdrawal of U.N. peacekeepers clashed with police in Haiti’s capital. They were angry over the cholera epidemic and the alleged sexual assault of an 18-year-old Haitian man by peacekeepers from Uruguay.
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