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UPDF to Deploy in Troubled Haiti

The Monitor (Kampala)
NEWS
October 7, 2004
Posted to the web October 7, 2004

By Grace Matsiko
Kampala
The Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) soldiers will deploy in Haiti, the
Caribbean State, where a hurricane recently decimated over 2,000 people, left
200,000 more homeless and hundreds unaccounted for.
The UPDF servicemen are deploying in the disaster and crisis riddled country
under the auspices of the United Nations as peace observers, Ugandan military
officials said yesterday. Army spokesman, Maj. Shaban Bantariza, confirmed the
UPDF peace keeping mission to Haiti.
He said, in addition to the Caribbean state, some officers will be deployed in
Liberia and another West African country. "Right now some (UPDF officers) are
doing a three-weeks orientation course in Abuja (Nigeria).
Some are here and others somewhere," Bantariza said. He said the total number
of officers on deployment are eight and mainly at the rank of captain.
According to sources in the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the UPDF officers will be
deployed in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti's capital and Gonaives, in the northwest of
the country where urban-armed gangs have been spearheading a rebel movement and
the area most affected by the hurricane.
Another group of three officers are set for deployment in Liberia.

   

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