PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – The UN mission to Haiti said yesterday that it will receive 750 more peacekeeping troops to help control the violence that threatens to undermine fall elections.

The new troops from Jordan will arrive in coming months and will serve as temporary reinforcement to the multinational contingent of 6,200 troops and 1,400 police trying to stabilise the country, said UN spokesman Damian Onses-Cardona.

The announced reinforcement came a day after Amnesty International said the presence of UN peacekeepers for more than a year had failed to curb widespread rights abuses and political violence and that the human rights crisis could worsen as the elections approach.

Haiti is scheduled to hold local elections in October followed by national elections in November to replace the interim government put in place after a violent rebellion that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004.

UN officials said security had begun to improve in recent weeks because of increased police roadblocks and raids against gang leaders.

While there are no official crime statistics for Haiti, a senior UN adviser said the average number of kidnappings in the capital, which has a population of some 2.5 million, has decreased by half to about six a day over past few weeks.

The U.N.’s mandate is expected to end next February, a few days after the newly elected government is scheduled to come into power.

Separately, the top UN peacekeeping official said yesterday that the United Nations was also seeking specialised troops or police who would be better trained for raids in dense civilian areas.

Jean-Marie Guehenno, the undersecretary-general for peacekeeping, told the Security Council that forces in Haiti were not trained for raids such as one this month in the capital’s Cite Soleil slum in which witnesses have claimed that at least nine civilians were killed in crossfire.

“I have to acknowledge the forces we have do not have the kind of very specialised capacity … that makes absolutely sure that there will be zero civilian casualties in a densely populated environment,” he said while briefing the council in New York.

Guehenno said he had did not yet have any commitments to supply such forces.