Peace
in Haiti is goal for footballers
ANDREW
HAY IN BRASILIA, Scotman
THE
Brazilian football team is planning to help disarm Haiti’s warring factions by
playing a match for which spectators will have to swap their guns for tickets
to the game.
Brazil’s Ronaldo and Ronaldinho are among the stars who could play Haiti’s national side at home in August to help Brazilian UN peacekeeping troops rebuild the poverty-stricken nation as it recovers from a revolt.
"Ronaldo insists on being there, Parreira [the Brazilian national coach] insists on going," Ricardo Teixeira, president of the Brazilian Football Confederation, said yesterday. "All of us in Brazil have to do our bit to end the years of fighting."
The
guns-for-soccer diplomacy was first suggested by Haiti’s interim prime minister,
Gerard Latortue.
He observed a few Brazilian soccer idols could do more to disarm warring militias than thousands of peacekeeping soldiers.
Football is hugely popular in Haiti and five-times world champions Brazil are the nation’s favourite foreign side.
Years of political turmoil in the poorest nation in the Americas has sapped funding for the Haitian team.
The national soccer stadium is badly run down and security concerns prompted the international soccer federation FIFA to ban official matches in the country.
Rebels will be able to swap guns for tickets a week before the Brazil-Haiti game, planned for 18 August, which Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, hopes to attend, Mr Teixeira said. It will not be the first time Brazilians have tried to spread the "make goals, not war" message.
Soccer great Pele is credited with stopping conflicts in Africa when his Brazilian club Santos played local teams.
Rebels in the former Belgian Congo put down their weapons in 1969, if only temporarily, when Santos visited the cities of Kinshasa and Brazzaville.
Mr Lula has offered Brazil’s biggest-ever UN force of 1,200 to lead the mission that entered Haiti in June.
Brazil’s Ronaldo and Ronaldinho are among the stars who could play Haiti’s national side at home in August to help Brazilian UN peacekeeping troops rebuild the poverty-stricken nation as it recovers from a revolt.
"Ronaldo insists on being there, Parreira [the Brazilian national coach] insists on going," Ricardo Teixeira, president of the Brazilian Football Confederation, said yesterday. "All of us in Brazil have to do our bit to end the years of fighting."
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He observed a few Brazilian soccer idols could do more to disarm warring militias than thousands of peacekeeping soldiers.
Football is hugely popular in Haiti and five-times world champions Brazil are the nation’s favourite foreign side.
Years of political turmoil in the poorest nation in the Americas has sapped funding for the Haitian team.
The national soccer stadium is badly run down and security concerns prompted the international soccer federation FIFA to ban official matches in the country.
Rebels will be able to swap guns for tickets a week before the Brazil-Haiti game, planned for 18 August, which Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, hopes to attend, Mr Teixeira said. It will not be the first time Brazilians have tried to spread the "make goals, not war" message.
Soccer great Pele is credited with stopping conflicts in Africa when his Brazilian club Santos played local teams.
Rebels in the former Belgian Congo put down their weapons in 1969, if only temporarily, when Santos visited the cities of Kinshasa and Brazzaville.
Mr Lula has offered Brazil’s biggest-ever UN force of 1,200 to lead the mission that entered Haiti in June.