21286: (Chamberlain) US to coordinate aid programs with Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Pablo Bachelet

     WASHINGTON, April 12 (Reuters) - Dealing directly with Haiti on aid
issues for the first time since 2000, the United States and other
international donors meet later this month to discuss how to ease poverty
in the troubled Caribbean nation, officials said on Monday.
     The meeting, which is to be chaired by the World Bank, will take place
in Port-au-Prince as the country tries to recover from a violent uprising
that left more than 200 dead and ended the presidency of Jean-Bertrand
Aristide.
     International donors will look for ways to give the government of
Haiti and other local organizations a greater say in deciding how aid is to
be spent.
     "We have a donors' conference scheduled in Haiti on April 22," said
Adolfo Franco, Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean
at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
     "We want to all work together on this in the international community,"
he said, adding that the U.S. has spent $850 million since 1995 and "the
results have not been what we desired."
     "There wasn't enough coordination with Haitian NGOs (nongovernmental
organizations), with the Haitian government... and with the (Haitian)
diaspora. We want to coordinate with these ... stakeholders," he told
Reuters in an interview.
     The United States has not dealt directly with the Haitian government
on aid issues since 2000, when allegations of irregularities in
parliamentary elections prompted Washington and other donors to suspend aid
relations with the Aristide government.
     Aristide, now in exile in Jamaica, has said the United States forced
him to leave office, a charge U.S. officials deny.
     Critics of U.S. policy say the freeze on direct aid to the government
hampered Aristide's efforts to help his most ardent supporters -- the poor
who make up the majority of Haiti's 8 million people.
     Following the Feb. 29 departure of Aristide the security situation had
improved "dramatically," allowing aid work to resume, although a strong
government presence was lacking in the countryside, Franco said.
     A spokesman for USAID said coordination work had already begun with
the new administration of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, but the
government was not getting any money "just yet."
     Besides the World Bank, the European Union, France, Canada and the
Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) plan to take part in the April 22
meeting.