Bill Clinton to be UN Envoy to Haiti

Bill Clinton visits Haiti in March 2009

Over at Foreign Policy’s ‘The Cable’, Laura Rozen has a scoop that former President Bill Clinton will be named UN Special Envoy to Haiti- as far as I know, no official announcement has been made yet:

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton will be named a U.N. special envoy on Haiti this week, sources close to the United Nations tell The Cable.

A UN official confirmed to The Cable that there would be a formal announcement on this Tuesday.

The Clinton Foundation did not immediately respond to queries; nor did the White House.

Clinton traveled with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to Haiti in March, on his fourth trip to the impoverished island nation of nine million people.

“I’ve been following this country for more than three decades,” Clinton told the Miami Herald. “I fell in love with it 35 years ago when Hillary and I came here. I think I understand what its shortcomings have been but I’ve always believed most of its problems were not as some people suggested; cultural, mystical…

[snip]

Haiti is important to the former president, a former Clinton administration official said, and was the first place his administration intervened abroad. In 1994, Clinton ordered the U.S. military to intervene in Haiti to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power several years after the former president was ousted in a military coup. The UN took over the lead on the peacekeeping mission in 1995, and some 9,000 UN peacekeepers currently remain in the country. Hurricanes last year killed an estimated 800 people in Haiti and caused an estimated $1 billion in damage.

To say the least, that tidbit of news is very interesting and hopefully there will be more info. on this soon.

UPDATE: CNN’s website is just announcing former President Clinton will in fact be named UN Special Envoy to Haiti- no link yet because the news is that…new!

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