| By Marc Burleigh
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP) – Haitian President Rene Preval will get a sympathetic hearing when he meets with US counterpart Barack Obama on Wednesday, ahead of an international donors’ conference for his quake-hit nation.
What he is looking for, though, is billions of dollars to rebuild the poorest country in the Americas, which lost 222,000 people, 70 percent of its capital Port-au-Prince and more than half its economy in the January 12 catastrophe.
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| Haiti President Rene Preval. AFP PHOTO |
Last month, the United Nations launched its biggest appeal ever: 1.44 billion dollars for water, food, sanitation and medical services to see Haiti through the rest of this year as it copes with the quake’s aftermath, including its 1.3 million homeless.
But the UN pledge amounts to just 10 percent of what the Inter-American Development Bank says Haiti needs to rebuild in the years to come — 14 billion dollars.
And debt relief announced in early February by Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States has alleviated only a small proportion of the 1.88 billion dollars the Caribbean nation still owes.
The stricken country relied on international aid for more than half of its revenue before the quake.
Obama will underscore that the Haitian people have a “friend and partner” in the United States, and discuss with Preval how the international community can support the Haitian government, the White House said.
The US Senate urged the International Monetary Fund and other lenders Friday to further relieve Haiti’s debt obligations and called for future aid to be in the form of grants, not loans.
The European Union meanwhile increased direct aid to Haiti, taking total European donations — including from individual EU states — to 609 million euros (828 million dollars).
EU foreign policy and security chief Catherine Ashton vowed during a visit that more long-term aid would be forthcoming, once Preval’s government defined priorities.
The Obama-Preval meeting was seen as a key preparatory step toward the donors’ conference set to take place at the United Nations in New York on March 31.
It may also be a forum for Preval to voice concerns that much of the aid pouring into Haiti has entirely by-passed his government, leaving it in the dark about aid recipients.
But Haiti’s homeless see the direct outside help as a positive sign after decades of corrupt governments.
“There isn’t any real politics in our country. Politics in our country is taking the money and putting it into a bank account, putting it in their pockets and running off,” quake survivor Pierre-Francis Junior told AFP as he stood in the vast tent city that is now his home in the capital.
Haiti and the United States have had a troubled past. US involvement in Haiti effectively began with a 1915-1934 occupation. US troops returned in 1994 and again in 2004 during regime changes.
After the quake, Washington deployed about 20,000 troops to Haiti for humanitarian aid operations. That number has since been halved. (Caribnet) |