World Digest
U.S. peacekeepers leave Haiti job to U.N.

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PORT-AU-PRINCE — U.S. troops officially ended their peacekeeping mission in Haiti yesterday, leaving the rest of the job to the United Nations at a time the poor nation remains gripped by growing street violence and political infighting.

The chief executive of Air France in Haiti, Didier Mortet, became the latest victim of the violence Thursday, when three men on a motorcycle rode up to his vehicle and shot him to death in Port-au-Prince. Robbery may have been the motive, authorities said.

"The availability of weapons and the climate of impunity continue to fuel insecurity and human-rights violations in Haiti, as measures to stop this are nowhere to be seen," Amnesty International said in a statement highly critical of the interim Haitian government and the U.S.-led multinational force brought in to reestablish order.

Nearly 2,000 U.S. troops — 1,500 of them Marines — started a gradual pullout from Haiti this month when the new U.N. peacekeeping force began to arrive.

Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue told hundreds of military and civilian dignitaries at the U.S.-U.N. command transfer ceremony yesterday that his government would in time begin to disarm the factions now racking the nation.

Indigenous peasants abused, Amnesty says

MEXICO CITY — Millions of Mexicans, most of them poor peasants, face rampant rights abuses by police, prosecutors and soldiers, Amnesty International said yesterday.

In the largely Indian countryside, farmers' crops have been razed in the name of fighting drugs, indigenous women have been raped by army patrols and activists have been arrested and accused of bogus charges to silence them, a team of Amnesty investigators from London found.
 
The group credited President Vicente Fox with making "limited advances" on rights issues since his 2000 election ended 71 years of one-party rule, but said the gains have not reached the grass roots, where an entrenched power system remains in place.

Sex-predator priest gets suspended term

WARSAW, Poland — A Polish court convicted a Roman Catholic priest yesterday of sexually abusing six young girls over a decade and imposed a two-year suspended prison sentence.

The regional court in the southern town of Krosno also barred the Rev. Michal Moskwa, 64, from teaching jobs for eight years.

In a closed-door trial last year, a court in central Poland sentenced a priest to three years in prison for sexually abusing young boys. That was believed to be the country's first such conviction of a clergyman.