Official: U.N. troop standards too low

VIENNA, Austria — U.N. standards for selecting peacekeepers are too low, and soldiers from countries whose armies are suspected of abuse should not be considered for peacekeeping duty, the U.N.'s chief anti-torture investigator said.

U.N. special rapporteur Manfred Nowak also told the Austrian news magazine Profil in an interview for Monday's editions that the United Nations should reconsider forming its own professional standing army.

Concerns about the quality, training and ethics of peacekeepers are growing as developing nations with questionable human-rights records increasingly send troops for international peacekeeping operations, Nowak said.

"The criteria are not very high," he told Profil, which released excerpts of the interview on Saturday. "The U.N. must impose stricter standards in recruiting soldiers."

Nowak singled out soldiers from Morocco, who are alleged to have abused minors in Ivory Coast.

The U.N. has said its own investigation "revealed serious allegations of widespread sexual exploitation and abuse" by Moroccan peacekeepers in the West African country, where about 9,000 U.N. troops have been deployed since 2003 to help prevent all-out civil war.

Last week, a 730-member battalion of Moroccan troops was confined to its barracks in the central Ivorian city of Bouake shortly after the U.N. began receiving allegations of the abuse of minors there.

The allegations are the first of their kind against the U.N. mission in Ivory Coast, though U.N. officials have said that more than 300 members of U.N. peacekeeping missions around the world have been investigated for sexual exploitation and abuse over the past three years in nations including Congo, Cambodia and Haiti.

Nowak also highlighted Nepal, where he alleged there is "systematic" torture.

He told Profil he would recommend that "as long as the military in Nepal tortures, no [Nepalese] troops should be consulted for peacekeeping missions."

In 2005, Nowak alleged that armed forces in Nepal routinely tortured Maoist rebels to extract confessions or information.

Although Nowak said senior army and police officials admitted to the alleged abuses, the Royal Nepalese Army denied the accusations at the time.