CANCUN, (Mexico): Haiti’s expanded national police force of 15,000 will be able to maintain security after the United Nations withdraws more than 2,300 peacekeeping troops following 13 years in the Caribbean nation, its president said.

Last month, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to end its peacekeeping mission in Haiti, and replace it with a smaller police presence, which will be drawn down after two years as the country boosts its own force.

“We are working to have a professional police force - a police force that gives security to the people, and to bring order as well,” Haitian President Jovenel Moise told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of a UN conference on disasters in the Mexican resort of Cancun.

“I see that the national police at the highest level is ready to secure the country,” he added.

The peacekeeping mission known as MINUSTAH, one of the longest-running in the world, has been dogged by controversies, including the introduction of cholera to the island nation and sexual abuse claims.

As it voted, the 15-member Security Council acknowledged the completion of Haiti’s electoral process in February as a “major milestone towards stabilisation” of the country.—Reuters