Annan names Guatemalan diplomat as his top envoy to Haiti

UNITED NATIONS_U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed veteran Guatemalan diplomat Edmond Mulet his top envoy for Haiti on Tuesday.

Mulet, Guatemala’s ambassador to the European Union, Belgium and Luxembourg, will lead the 9,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti, the United Nations said in a statement from its headquarters in New York.

He joins the mission at a critical time, just two days after Haitian President Rene Preval was sworn in.

On Monday, Mulet’s predecessor, Juan Gabriel Valdes, appealed for urgent foreign aid and warned that Haiti could suffer another crisis unless Haitians see progress soon.

Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation, has been in turmoil since a violent rebellion toppled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004.

Mulet, who has also served as Guatemala’s ambassador to the United States, is a longtime advocate of democracy and indigenous rights. He was expelled from Guatemala several times and briefly imprisoned in 1981 when the country was under military rule, the U.N. statement said.

Born in 1951, Mulet, was educated in Canada, the United States and Switzerland. He won a seat on Guatemala’s National Congress in 1982, and became its president in 1992.

Edmond Mulet