Venezuela Offers Haiti Aid, Including Energy

Venezuela Offers Haiti Aid, Including Energy, Senior UN Peacekeeping Official Says

Venezuela, citing historical ties, has offered to assist Haiti in the areas of energy, education and economic development, the head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Caribbean country, Juan Gabriel Valdés, said.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Ali Rodriguez made the offer in the margins of a meeting of foreign ministers from the Rio Group of Latin American states, focusing on Haiti, last Thursday and Friday in Bariloche, Argentina, he said.

The Rio Group, some of whose members have contributed troops to the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), pledged to continue to support Haiti in its efforts to surmount its current political, economic and social crises, Mr. Valdés said.

In this regard, he urged them to continue providing support beyond the elections and for as long as it took to make the advances gained in Haiti’s stabilization irreversible, MINUSTAH said.

MINUSTAH was set up by the UN Security Council last year to help to re-establish order in the impoverished country after an insurgency forced elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to go into exile in February.

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