MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mercosur invited to command Haiti peace mission.

Mercosur military representatives in United Nations have been invited to a “consultation round” with the purpose of planning for a joint long term peace keeping mission in unstable Haiti, revealed this Tuesday Uruguayan Defence Minister Yamandú Fau.

"It would be a special mission, very much long term, possibly with the participation of 5,000 peace keeping servicemen, according to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan working paper", said Mr. Fau.

"It's a completely new proposal since Mercosur would be commanding the overall peace and stability effort in Haiti possibly for ten years". However Mr. Fau pointed out that "the Mercosur chart contemplates economic, trade, and tariff issues, but there's no mention to peace keeping or regional security for that matter".

Mercosur Home Secretaries meet regularly to assess and exchange information on internal security and terrorism prevention, "but we've never considered joint peace keeping missions", underlined Mr. Fau. When asked why the issue was under consideration if Mercosur does not contemplate among its objectives regional security matters, Mr. Fau replied that "we're responding to a United Nations initiative".

Nevertheless Mr. Fau emphasized that Uruguay has ratified its willingness to maintain and increase its presence in peace keeping missions under United Nations command "and if we are asked to go to Haiti and we have the operational resources, we would".

Anyhow for Mercosur it's a completely different scenario "because we're not an organization that was outlined to be involved in military missions and this necessarily has legal and structural implications", concluded Mr. Fau.

In related news, Uruguayan president Jorge Batlle will be visiting this month Congo and South Africa. Mr. Batlle will first stop in Congo where Uruguay has almost 1,500 troops from the three services in peace keeping operations under United Nations command.

The Uruguayan president will then fly to South Africa for an official state visit.