Haiti's new government can now get to work.
After seven hours of sometimes heated debate, legislators in parliament's lower house on Monday overwhelmingly endorsed President Jean Bertrand Aristide's 17-member Cabinet.The new ministers, whose task is to turn around the country after three years of military repression, were to be sworn in Tuesday in the national palace.
Aristide's pick for prime minister, 57-year-old Smarck Michel, was ratified over the weekend by both houses.
Michel's platform includes an economic recovery program based on reducing tariffs, increasing exports and privatizing unprofitable state enterprises.
Meanwhile, more U.S. soldiers who arrived in Haiti in September to help restore Aristide's elected government flew home as part of U.S. troop cutbacks.
The Pentagon has announced a drawing down of about 9,000 soldiers by Christmas.
Some 6,000 will be left behind, down from a peak of 21,000 troops.
His work in Haiti done, Lt. Col. Bob Defraites boarded a U.S-bound transport plane with visions of a hot tub waiting for him back home.
"The work was good, the living conditions were lousy," said Defraites, of Washington, D.C., one of dozens of soldiers leaving Monday.
"I'd like to soak in a bathtub, that sounds good."
The American presence here has been warmly welcomed by most Haitians, who credit the troops with ending the terror of the military regime that overthrew Aristide in a September 1991 coup.
Still, news of the U.S. pullout has left some Haitians worried.
"Why are they leaving so early?" said 40-year-old artist Richard Casseus, pausing on a Port-au-Prince street.
"With the Americans here, we've been able to sleep nights."
Casseus worried that their departure may be followed by a return of the paramilitary thugs, blamed for some 3,000 political murders condoned by the military rulers.
A U.S. military spokesman in Port-au-Prince, Col. Barry Willey, said Monday that Haiti is "safe and secure" enough to allow for the troop reduction.
American forces have taken some 17,800 weapons off the streets, 5,800 of them through buy-back programs and 12,000 through confiscation, he said.
International police monitors are working with an interim Haitian police force and U.S. Special Forces are policing communities across the Caribbean country.