Free Republic

Right now, more than 90,000 U.N. peacekeeping troops are stationed in conflict zones around the world—more than at any other moment in history. Though U.N. peacekeeping missions are financed largely by the U.S. and European countries, most soldiers on the ground come from the developing world. In 2008, the top five troop contributors for these operations were Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nigeria, and Nepal, with Ghana, Jordan, and Rwanda close behind. Some critics of the current system are calling for the U.N. to create a standing army—like NATO has—to improve response time and increase professionalism of troops. The U.S. remains opposed...

The United States is prepared to provide more military observers, police, and civilian staff to beef up the U.N.'s far-flung peacekeeping operations, the U.S. ambassador said Monday. The United Nations has nearly 115,000 troops, police and civilians deployed in 16 peacekeeping missions from Africa and the Mideast to Cyprus, Kosovo, Western Sahara and Haiti, but it has had trouble finding soldiers, helicopters and other key assets for several important operations.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Militants blasted their way into two transport terminals in Pakistan on Sunday and torched more than 160 vehicles destined for U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan, in the biggest assault yet on a vital military supply line, officials said.

In the Ivory Coast, a 13-year-old girl is gang-raped in a field by 10 UN peacekeepers , and left on the ground, bleeding, trembling and vomiting. This is part of a larger picture involving fresh allegations by a U.K.-based charity, Save the Children, of UN peacekeepers abusing children in the Ivory Coast, Haiti, and Southern Sudan. As detailed by the BBC, "the UN has said it welcomes the report, which it will study closely." Oh, great. The UN can add this report to its research collection of previous reports on UN peacekeeper rape in Liberia and Sierra Leone and the...

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA (AFP) - UN police were forced to withdraw Monday from the Serb-populated part of this flashpoint Kosovo town after coming under attack as they stormed a court occupied by Serbs opposed to independence. Police said more than 100 people were injured as the troops met gunfire and suspected grenade blasts in the worst violence to have flared in Kosovo since its independence declaration a month ago on February 17. The clashes erupted after UN police and NATO-led KFOR (Kosovo Force) troops surrounded the courthouse in Kosovska Mitrovica for a pre-dawn raid to evict the Serb protestors. Kosovo police...

French peacekeepers carried out war games in south Lebanon on Tuesday in what appeared to be a an orientation with the terrain abutting Israel. The state-run National News Agency (NNA) said a unit of the French contingent serving with the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) backed by Armored Personnel carriers carried out the maneuver in the eastern sector of south Lebanon, better known as the Arqoub region. The French contingent, the report added, carried out similar maneuvers last week in the central sector of the southern province abutting Israel. UNIFIL and troops of the Lebanese army patrol a demilitarized...

KHARTOUM, Sudan - An American diplomat and his driver were shot to death Tuesday in the Sudanese capital, the U.S. Embassy said, a day after a joint African Union-United Nations force took over peacekeeping in Sudan's Darfur region. It was not immediately known if the motive for the attack was political or a random crime. "This afternoon, the American officer succumbed to his injuries and passed away," said Walter Braunohler, the spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum. Braunohler said the diplomat, whose name was not released, worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Sudanese Foreign Ministry identified...

He has fought against foes ranging from the Green Goblin to Doctor Octopus, but Spider-Man now faces an even more formidable challenge: improving the battered image of the United Nations. In a move reminiscent of storylines developed during the second world war, the UN is joining forces with Marvel Comics, creators of Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk, to create a comic book showing the international body working with superheroes to solve bloody conflicts and rid the world of disease. The comic, initially to be distributed free to 1m US schoolchildren, will be set in a war-torn fictional country and feature...

Pakistani UN peacekeeping troops have traded in gold and sold weapons to Congolese militia groups they were meant to disarm, the BBC has learnt.(sic) These militia groups were guilty of some of the worst human rights abuses during the Democratic Republic of Congo's long civil war. The trading went on in 2005. A UN investigative team sent to gather evidence was obstructed and threatened. The team's report was buried by the UN itself to "avoid political fallout". These events took place in and around the mining town of Mongbwalu, in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The Pakistani battalion of the...

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanese military intelligence officials have detained members of a suspected "terrorist network" for plotting attacks against U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, the army said Monday. The group had planted a bomb near the southern city of Tyre in an attempt to target a U.N. patrol, but it did not explode because of a problem with the trigger, the army said in a statement. The suspects also admitted they planned to plant two other bombs in the area and detonate them within a short period "in order to cause maximum casualties among the forces," the statement said. Two...

Ozawa in power would send SDF to U.N. force in Afghanistan 10/06/2007 THE ASAHI SHIMBUN Japanese troops would join a U.N. peacekeeping force in Afghanistan if Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) takes over the government, according to a proposal by party leader Ichiro Ozawa. Ozawa made the proposal in the November issue of the monthly opinion journal Sekai (World), due out on Tuesday. The proposal will serve as the basis for the opposition party's counterproposal to a government bill to extend Japan's refueling mission in the Indian Ocean for the U.S.-led war against terror. In the article, the Minshuto chief...

The Darfur region of Western Sudan has been beset by a genocidal civil conflict since 2003. Now, finally, the United Nations has decided to put its members' peacemaking might behind the UN's lofty rhetoric-- sort of. On Tuesday, the UN Security Council passed a resolution sponsored by Britain and France that would send 26,000 troops and police to Darfur. If those peacekeepers actually materialize; and if sponsoring nations agree to pay the $2-billion that such a mission would cost every year; and if the troops are able to do their job despite rules of engagement that restrict their ability to...

NEW YORK — The U.N. Security Council yesterday authorized a new peacekeeping mission for Darfur, a complex military effort with 26,000 African and U.N. forces under a single command that will be the largest ever attempted by the world body. The resolution setting up the mission also calls for an immediate cease-fire in the Darfur region of Western Sudan and sets a timetable for the force to be fully deployed by early 2008. No U.S. troops will participate directly in the mission, but they likely will help move troops and materiel. "We call in particular on [Sudanese] President [Omar] Bashir...

Security Council Approves 26,000-Strong Peacekeeping Force to Help End Darfur Bloodshed 07-31-2007 4:22 PM By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer UNITED NATIONS (Associated Press) -- The U.N. Security Council approved a 26,000-strong peacekeeping force for Darfur on Tuesday to try to help end four years of fighting that has killed more than 200,000 people in the conflict-wracked Sudanese region. The force _ the first joint peacekeeping mission by the African Union and the United Nations _ will replace the beleaguered 7,000-strong AU force now on the ground in Darfur no later than Dec. 31. The council urged that the...

VIENNA, Austria — U.N. standards for selecting peacekeepers are too low, and soldiers from countries whose armies are suspected of abuse should not be considered for peacekeeping duty, the U.N.'s chief anti-torture investigator said. U.N. special rapporteur Manfred Nowak also told the Austrian news magazine Profil in an interview for Monday's editions that the United Nations should reconsider forming its own professional standing army. Concerns about the quality, training and ethics of peacekeepers are growing as developing nations with questionable human-rights records increasingly send troops for international peacekeeping operations, Nowak said.

BEIRUT, Lebanon: Militant Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah suggested Tuesday that Israel may be behind two recent bomb attacks that targeted United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon. Six peacekeepers belonging to the Spanish contingent were killed on June 24 when a bomb struck their armored personnel carrier in the country's south, marking the first such attack against the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL. On July 16, a roadside bomb struck a U.N. jeep in the village of Qassimiyeh near the southern port city of Tyre, causing damage to the vehicle but no casualties. No group has...

America already gives more than any other country to bankroll the multi-billion dollar UN activities politely known as "peacekeeping." But at least Congress in an effort to curb UN abuse had managed to cap U.S. contributions at 25% of the ever-expanding UN peacekeeping budget. Looks like that cap is on its way out the window. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has just given a thumbs up to Senator Joe Biden's bill to increase U.S. contributions to 27.1%, retroactive to 2005 and extending through 2008 - a move that would add another billion or so to the already outsized U.S. payola...

Hezbolla Condemns the Attack as "Intended to Destabilize the Area" Beirut - Six soldiers from the Spanish army deployed in Lebanon as "blue helmets" have died and another two are wounded after an attack against their convoy in the south of the country, according to official sources at the Spanish Ministry of Defence. These are the first Spanish deaths as part of the peace mission deployed by the United Nations in Lebanon. No group has admitted responsibility for the attack yet... [Spanish president] Rodríguez Zapatero spoke with the general of the International Brigade, Ramón Martín Ambrosio, to tell him he...

BEIRUT, Lebanon, June 24 — A car bombing killed five United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Sunday, opening another potentially disastrous fault line in a country held hostage to violence and political deadlock. No one claimed responsibility for the attack on the peacekeepers, who were deployed along the border with Israel after last summer’s war with Hezbollah. But suspicion immediately fell on militant Islamists, who are fighting the Lebanese Army in the country’s north. The United Nations force, Unifil, has been on alert for weeks because of that fight and several bombings that are believed to be related to...

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A bomb apparently targeting U.N. peacekeepers exploded by the side of a road in southern Lebanon on Sunday, killing four Spanish troops and injuring at least four, a senior Lebanese security official said. The senior official in Beirut said a mine may have caused the explosion, but another security official based in southern Lebanon said a bomb detonated at the side of a road about four miles north of the Israeli border town of Metulla. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

SUDAN has vowed to defy a UN takeover of peacekeeping forces in the strife-torn Darfur region, but the US declared Khartoum's agreement was not needed. The battle of words yesterday came after a Security Council vote that approved the deployment of up to 17,000 UN troops to the Sudanese region to take over from the African Union force. The AU mission has been unable to stop the conflict in the poor but oil-rich region, in which up to 300,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced. Deploying a strong UN force is seen as crucial to shore up the...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution Thursday that would give the United Nations authority over peacekeepers in Darfur as soon as Sudan's government gives its consent - which it has so far refused to do. The resolution is meant to give more power and funding to a force, now run by the African Union, that has been unable to stop the humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur. The violence has killed more than 200,000 people and continues to worsen. The document passed 12-0, with China, Russia and Qatar abstaining. Yet the council cannot take any significant action...

FOR years the United Nations attempted to cover up perverted and outrageous behaviour by uniformed and civilian personnel who have served in East Timor since 1999. But as a new wave of more than 2000 UN-employed police and staff prepare to travel to the capital Dili, Sukehiro Hasegawa, the top UN official in East Timor, has acknowledged for the first time that the UN system failed to bring anyone to justice for crimes that included sex abuse of children and bestiality. Dr Hasegawa declared that the UN's Integrated Mission in East Timor (UNMIT), which became operational on Monday, would enforce...

France has not stepped up as hoped to man the UN's ceasefire force in Lebanon, pledging on Friday to send just 200 soldiers, rather than the 2,000 or more expected. They will join another 200 soldiers France already had there as part of the previous UN peacekeeping force. Germany will not send combat troops, just ships to patrol offshore and perhaps some customs agents and border police. Denmark will send a frigate, but no ground forces. Muslim countries, however, have been only too eager to step up to the plate. Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia have together committed 6,000 soldiers, nearly...

The United Nations appealed to European countries Friday to contribute to an expanded peacekeeping force in Lebanon that would have a balance of European and Muslim troops so that Israel and Lebanon will view it as legitimate. Italy endorsed sending troops to Lebanon but did not commit itself to specific numbers. Finland decided to send up to 250 peacekeepers to Lebanon, but said they would not be deployed until November..... Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown said the news was promising but more European soldiers are needed for a vanguard force of 3,500 troops that the U.N. wants on the ground...

PARIS - The French general who leads the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon said Monday he wants reinforcements quickly, warning that even one "stray act" could unravel a diplomatic effort to halt the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. Maj. Gen. Alain Pellegrini, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, said a U.N. Security Council resolution approved Friday could give unprecedented new strength to the 28-year-old UNIFIL force that often has been criticized as ineffective in the past. Diplomats and military advisers were working Monday to decide which countries could help boost the 2,000-strong force to 15,000, as was approved...

Hezbollah and its foreign sponsors deserve credit: They understand the perverse psychology of the Middle East. They knew they could launch a war against Israel and then have Israel get the blame for the devastation that inevitably would follow. They knew also that if Israel failed to respond forcefully to their ground and missile attacks, they could say Israel was cowardly. And if Israel did respond forcefully, they could say Israel was a bully, its response “disproportionate” — even while insisting that Israel was doing them no serious damage. They knew they could target Israeli civilians and hide combatants and...

KUALA LUMPUR : Malaysia has said an emergency meeting of key Muslim countries this week will call for an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East and discuss a formal United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon. Malaysia is currently the chair of the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), whose executive committee will meet in the country's administrative centre of Putrajaya on Thursday. "We want a UN peacekeeping force," Malaysia's Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar was quoted as saying by the state Bernama news agency. "We will also urge that such a force include the participation of Islamic nations," he...

Canadian killed from UN force complained his position shielding Hizbullah Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 26 July 2006 "...the tragic loss of a soldier yesterday who I happen to know and I think probably is from my Regiment. We've received e-mails from him a few days ago and he described the fact that he was taking within - in one case - three meters of his position "for tactical necessity - not being targeted". Now that's veiled speech in the military and what he was telling us was Hizbullah fighters were all over his position and the IDF were (sic) targeting...

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan today said he was "shocked" at Israel's "apparently deliberate targeting" of a UN post in Lebanon, in which up to four UN observers were killed. Mr Annan described the strike as a "co-ordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long established and clearly marked UN post." He said it took place "despite personal assurances given to me by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that UN positions would be spared Israeli fire." "Furthermore, General Alain Pelligrini, the UN Force Commander in south Lebanon, had been in repeated contact with Israeli officers throughout the day on Tuesday, stressing...

UNITED NATIONS, July 25 (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on Israel on Tuesday to investigate what he termed the "apparently deliberate targeting" by Israeli defense forces of a U.N. observer post in Lebanon. The?¬Ô?1¥è ȅƢ??¥ê?ƃÂt©©?x)our U.N. military observers who were part of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, U.N. and Lebanese officials said "I am shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces of a U.N. Observer post in southern Lebanon," Annan said in a statement issued at U.N. headquarters in New York. He was in Rome for an international meeting on...

UN peacekeepers have abandoned at least 20 babies fathered with poverty-stricken Timorese women, an investigation has shown. The UN investigation has also uncovered a culture of cover-up, in which babies born to peacekeepers and sex crimes committed by its personnel over seven years have been kept secret because of a "fear of shame and embarrassment". A report on the investigation recommends that a policy of zero tolerance of sexual misconduct be enforced on UN staff. The report reveals for the first time babies born to UN peacekeepers have been abandoned without financial support. Their mothers have been stigmatised and in...

(AP) PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- U.N. peacekeepers on Friday found the bodies of 16 people believed killed in a surge of gang violence, the latest sign the Caribbean nation's capital may be slipping back into disorder after months of relative calm. The troops from Sri Lanka the bodies in the southern Port-au-Prince slum of Martissant, a U.N. statement said. The slum was the site of a recent spate of gunbattles between warring gangs. The victims apparently were shot to death in an hours-long gunfight among Haitian gang members fighting for control of the area, said Pierre Esperance, a local human...

KHARTOUM, 05/28 - The third and last batch of 130 Chinese peacekeepers arrived in Sudan on Saturday, completing deployment of a total of 430 Chinese peacekeeping troops to the country. The Chinese peacekeepers landed in El-Obeid, central Sudan and immediately reported for duty at the logistics base of the UN peacekeeping mission in Sudan. They were to stay in El-Obeid for Saturday night and then travel the next day to Wau in southern Sudan, where the barracks of the Chinese peacekeepers are based. The second batch of 135 Chinese peacekeepers arrived in El-Obeid on Friday following the arrival of another...

THE voice of Osama bin Laden was heard across the world again yesterday with the broadcast of a new tape in which he sought to link al-Qaeda with both Palestinian militants and the brutal civil war in Sudan.In his first message for three months, bin Laden said that the West’s decision to cut off funds to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority proved that it was conducting “a Zionist crusader war on Islam�. He also spoke about the Darfur crisis in Sudan, which has caused 180,000 deaths, calling on “holy warriors� to defend Islam and “prepare for a long war� against a...

New York - Measures will be taken to strengthen African Union forces in Sudan's Darfur region while the UN is getting ready to take over the peacekeeping operation in the troubled territory, Secretary General Kofi Annan said Friday. Some of the 7,000 African troops in Darfur will be integrated in the UN operation, Annan said. The AU decided Friday to extend its presence in Darfur until September after announcing its intention to pull out because of the lack of logistical resources. 'Between now and the time that the UN takes over, measures will be taken to strengthen the African Union...

KHARTOUM, Sudan Mar 8, 2006 (AP)— Tens of thousands of Sudanese marched through Khartoum on Wednesday, protesting plans to deploy of U.N. peacekeepers in conflict-torn Darfur and demanding the expulsion of the top U.N. and U.S. envoys in the country. The Sudanese government also increased its opposition to the deployment, with a top official warning that violence will only increase if U.N. troops move in to replace African Union peacekeepers. "If the U.N arrives the troubles will spread in the region," Mohamed Elsamani, Sudan's minister of state for foreign affairs, said in Nairobi. Officials from the European Union, the United...

Sexual abuse charges against U.N. peacekeepers remain unacceptably high due to a persistent "culture of dismissiveness" in field missions, a U.N. diplomat said on Thursday. It could take three to four more years for a reform program to fully take hold, Jordan's U.N. ambassador, Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid al-Hussein, said in updating the U.N. Security Council on how the problem was being addressed. A spike in allegations was "not entirely unexpected" since a system was now in now place to facilitate complaints, he said, and all the reform elements had not yet been implemented. Al-Hussein was asked by the United...

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Thousands of civilians have taken refuge on floating islands in the lakes of Congo's Katanga province to escape rape and murder by government and militia fighters, a top U.N. humanitarian official said on Thursday. Some 120,000 people have fled their homes in the remote Mitwaba area, where hundreds of women have been raped during fighting between the army and former pro-government militiamen that U.N. peacekeepers are unable to control, he added. Congo is staggering toward elections, due later this year, but fighting continues in Katanga and elsewhere in the lawless east, where minerals are plentiful and gunmen...

UNITED NATIONS - The American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, criticized Secretary-General Annan yesterday for employing double standards over sending U.N. troops to the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur. Mr. Bolton said that while Mr. Annan has publicly chided Washington for leadership shortcomings on Darfur, he has not encouraged Africans and Arabs to do more, and has failed to push his own U.N. underlings hard enough. Mr. Bolton signaled America's sense of urgency on Darfur when he elevated the issue to the top of the Security Council's agenda on assuming the council's presidency for the month of February....

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — U.N. peacekeepers opened fire Monday on Haitians protesting election results, killing at least one and wounding four, witnesses said as flaming roadblocks paralyzed the capital. Hundreds of screaming demonstrators elsewhere stormed into an upscale hotel housing an electoral office in the hills above Port-au-Prince and helicopters landed on the roof to evacuate guests. Associated Press journalists saw the body of a man in the street in the Tabarre neighborhood, a T-shirt bearing the image of leading candidate Rene Preval soaked in blood. Witnesses said Jordanian U.N. peacekeepers opened fire on them, killing two and wounding four....

We have to live in and manage a world in which the threat and use of force remain an ever present reality. The material capacity, economic efficiency, political organization and military skills in the use of force determine the international power hierarchy. Great powers rise and fall on the tide of history. Rivalry between them caused two world wars in the last century that strengthened the determination to tame the use of military force as an accepted part of sovereign statehood. The right to wage war in self-defense was kept by states, but otherwise the decision to authorize wars was...

KINSHASA, Congo -- The United Nations pulled its remaining peacekeepers out of the national park where eight Guatemalan peacekeepers were killed in an apparent gunbattle with Ugandan rebels, a U.N. spokesman said Tuesday. Hans-Jakob Reichen, U.N. military spokesman for eastern Congo, said the peacekeepers were withdrawn because they had completed a two-week mission to clear Garamba National Park of rebel forces. "It was decided to pull peacekeepers out of the park since any suspected rebels had melted into the jungle," Reichen said. The park straddles Congo's remote northeastern border with Sudan. Monday's violence marked the second-biggest single loss of life...

Bangladeshi United Nations peacekeepers have pulled out of a camp in western Ivory Coast after clashing with supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo. Four people are reported to have been killed when a UN base in Guiglo, 300km (187 miles) from Abidjan, was attacked. France has called for calm in towns and cities in the government-controlled south after three days of protests. Mr Gbagbo supporters are angry at international mediators wanting to dissolve the pro-Gbagbo parliament. The ruling party subsequently pulled out of the transitional government and UN-backed peace talks and is calling on the 10,000 French and UN troops keeping...

United Nations peacekeepers in Ivory Coast's main city are under siege by supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo. More than 2,000 protesters have tried to force their way into UN headquarters in Abidjan, and had to be held back by warning shots and tear gas. More than 300 troops have been forced to withdraw from two UN bases in the west of the country after clashes that left at least four protesters dead.

EIGHT UN officials have been suspended with pay as part of an investigation into the world body's procurement services following scandals in the oil-for-food program in Iraq, UN officials said this morning. The investigation by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services is the result of a probe into contracts in the UN peacekeeping department, which is fielding some 85,000 troops, police and civilians around the world. "There is an audit being done of peacekeeping department management," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. "As a result of that audit, which also took a look at the procurement department ... we have...

The commander of a United Nations peacekeeping force in Haiti shot himself dead on Saturday, U.N. officials said. Brazilian Lt. Gen. Urano Teixeira da Matta Bacellar killed himself in a room at the Montana hotel in the troubled Caribbean country's capital, the officials said. Few other details were immediately available. Teixeira da Matta took over the U.N. peacekeeping force at the end of August. The mission, known by its acronym MINUSTAH, was sent to Haiti to keep the peace between supporters and foes of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide after Aristide was ousted following a monthlong armed revolt in February 2004....

Diplomacy: Remember the fuss about John Bolton, how Democrats stalled his confirmation as U.N. ambassador and depicted him as a threat to the world order? Well, his recess appointment is having a salutary impact. That's not how it was supposed to turn out, at least according to the Democrats and the media hysterics. Bolton was the tough-talking undersecretary of state who was once so impolitic as to quip that it wouldn't much matter if the top 10 stories of the East River edifice were knocked over. Mix in some rumors about Bolton bullying State Department subordinates — a delicious fantasy,...

MOSCOW, December 21 (Itar-Tass) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin submitted to the Federation Council upper house of parliament the proposal to use a unit of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the United Nations peacekeeping operation in Sudan, the presidential press service reported on Wednesday. The letter, specifically, says that the United Nations secretary-general requested Russia’s sending a military unit of its Armed Forces to Sudan to take part in the United Nations peacekeeping operation in Sudan. The UN operation is carried out in Sudan in accordance with the resolution of the UN Security Council, which envisages the...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - Gunmen shot and killed a Canadian police officer with the U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti on Tuesday, a U.N. official said. The officer was shot on National Route 1 not far from Cite Soleil, a large slum in the capital Port-au-Prince, said Marc Jaquet, a spokesman for the police contingent of the U.N. peacekeeping force. Canada identified the victim as Mark Bourque, and said he was one of 25 police officers who went to Haiti in October as part of the Canadian Special Elections Contingent. The peacekeepers, now numbering nearly 9,000 soldiers and police, were sent...