EVIDENCE “strongly suggests” that a United Nations peacekeeping mission brought a cholera strain to Haiti that has killed thousands of people, a study by a team of epidemiologists and physicians says.

The United Nations secretary-general plans to call for an independent commission to study whether UN peacekeepers caused a cholera outbreak that has killed more than 2,400 people in Haiti, an official said today.

United Nations investigators took samples of foul-smelling waste trickling behind a Nepalese peacekeeping base in Haiti amid claims that sewage from the newly arrived unit caused the cholera epidemic that has made more than 4,000 people ill.

A spreading cholera outbreak in rural Haiti threatened to outpace aid groups as they stepped up efforts hoping to keep the disease from reaching the squalid camps of earthquake survivors in Port-au-Prince.

REBEL forces virtually isolated Haiti President Jean Bertrand Aristide yesterday as international pressure mounted on the beleaguered leader to quit.