21878: (Chamberlain) No donor fatigue over Haiti, says US aid agency (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Michael Christie

     MIAMI, May 14 (Reuters) - The slow pace of putting together a
comprehensive aid package for Haiti is not a sign of "donor fatigue" after
the last attempt to rebuild the poorest country in the Americas failed, a
U.S. aid official said on Friday.
     Adolfo Franco, an assistant administrator with the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID), said donor nations were working with the
Haitian diaspora in their countries and with the new U.S.-backed Haitian
government to decide priorities.
     The United States, Canada and European Union were also trying to
coordinate with each other before deciding how best to help Haiti back on
its feet after a monthlong revolt ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
in February.
     "I don't think there is donor fatigue but there is a sense of donor
responsibility," Franco, in charge of Latin America and the Caribbean for
USAID, told reporters in Miami, where he had been meeting with
Haitian-Americans.
     "I think there is an appreciation in the international community that
we need to get it right."
     Donor nations will meet in Canada in June and were expected to lay out
their first spending priorities, Franco added.
     Aristide, once a wildly popular priest who critics charge turned from
being a champion of democracy into a despot, fled Haiti on Feb. 29, facing
an armed revolt and U.S. and French pressure to quit.
     After his fall, and the arrival of a 3,600-strong U.S.-led force, the
United Nations appealed for $35 million in emergency aid. But donors
appeared reluctant to cough up the funds.
     So far, no donor country has come up with a major long-term pledge to
help Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, installed by a council of prominent
Haitians, build up the hapless police force, fund the government or prepare
for elections in 2005.
     Latortue told the United Nations this week his country of 8 million
people needed more than just peacekeepers. The United Nations is due to
take over peacekeeping in Haiti on June 1 and plans to send 8,000 troops
and police.
     Franco said Washington was committed to helping Haiti.
     But he noted that the United States had poured $850 million, without
clear results, into the Caribbean country since 1994, when Aristide was
restored to power by U.S. Marines. He had been ousted in a coup three years
before.
     Franco said the U.S. government intended to almost double USAID's $51
million budget for Haiti this year, and would give money directly to the
Haitian government. It had stopped direct aid to Aristide.