Chad plans to send 800 security personnel to Haiti, official says
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E-mailN'DJAMENA, March 20 (Reuters) - Chad intends to deploy 800 police officers and gendarmes to Haiti this year to participate in an international force to help Haiti's police fight powerful armed gangs, a senior Chadian police official told Reuters.
The Chadian forces are expected to arrive by June after receiving training from "European and American partners", said the official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
Dominican Republic Foreign Minister Roberto Alvarez said this week that the U.N.-backed Gang Suppression Force would reach its full capacity of 5,500 by October and that Kenyan police who deployed to Haiti under an earlier model of the force should withdraw gradually.
Alvarez, who spoke after a meeting with U.S. officials, said the forces from Chad were being trained in the U.S., though a State Department spokesperson denied that.
"We thank the Government of Chad for their pledged contribution to the Gang Suppression Force... Chadian troops are not training in the United States," the spokesperson said.
The Gang Suppression Force was introduced as a larger successor to the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission, but no significant deployments have arrived since its approval last September.
The force is currently made up of mostly Kenyan police, as well as smaller numbers from a handful of countries in Central America and the Caribbean.
Chad told the United Nations in October 2023 that it was willing to contribute troops and police to the MSS, without specifying numbers or a timeline.
At the time, the U.N. also received similar pledges from Benin and Bangladesh.
None have so far deployed.
(Reporting by Mahamat Ramadane; Additional reporting and writing by Robbie Corey-BouletEditing by Gareth Jones)
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