Towards a European security mission in Haiti? (shift)

(BRUSSELS2 / updated Fri. 19 p.m.) The Ban Ki Moon's request after the earthquake in Haiti is on the European table. And it is a question of responding to it in a way that does honor to the Europeans (a little better than for the Congo). The 27 COPS ambassadors are addressing the issue today Friday. And the Foreign Ministers will discuss it on Monday. Will a new PeSDC operation be launched? Or will we take advantage (for the first time) of the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty which allows a group of countries to be given the possibility of carrying out a mission? (*). In fact, neither a priori (read the 3rd paragraph)

Be at the height. Spanish Prime Minister Jose-Luis Zapatero on Wednesday outside the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Faced with the disaster in Haiti, "Europe must be up to it (...) We will offer a strong response to their international aid needs. » . It was not just empty talk to do well in a forum committed to the European cause. It was a question of sending a message first of all to certain States more reluctant than France or Spain to engage in a coordinated way in Haiti. A way also to say and support Catherine Ashton, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs. so that it defends a certain level of specifically European ambition

securing. One of the options considered is to put a European police/gendarmerie unit at the service of the Minustah, as quickly as possible, with a few hundred men. It would thus be a matter of taking over from the American soldiers (whose job it is not really), for a period of less than a year (about six months), while MINUSTAH reconstitutes its forces. The manpower required for the mission does not seem to be a problem (**). Spain is in favor of such a mission and has promised several dozen men from the Guardia Civil. France has already indicated that it can hire a maximum of 100 gendarmes for 6 months. It remains to have the idea validated by the other Ministers of Foreign Affairs. This would be the first (civilian) defense mission on the American continent.

It's not quite a PeSDC mission, several diplomats told me. We are more on the model of what the Europeans did for UNIFIL II in Lebanon. A bundled, coordinated, structured offer at the United Nations. Men sent operating within the legal framework and in the context of MINUSTAH. It is not a question, in fact, of doubling the mission and the chain of command already in place. It's also about being quick. Setting up a PeSDC mission would have taken too long...

(*) section 44 of the Lisbon Treaty
(**) Alain Leroy, the head of the peacekeeping department (DKPO) at the UN, asked for 457 men in all, some of whom
of Europeans.