22746: (Chamberlain) Money for Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

Haiti confident donors will pay for rebuilding

By Gabrielle Grenz


WASHINGTON (AFP):  Haitian Prime Minister Gerard Latortue said Monday he
expects donors meeting here will agree to fund a 1.3-billion-dollar program
to rebuild the shattered country.

"I am sure the money will come tomorrow," Latortue, who is to address the
two-day donors' conference Tuesday, told reporters here.

"We are ready this time to make sure that there will be a very good
coordination in the implementation of the program," he said, promising his
office would answer for how the money is spent.

The prime minister, leading an interim government of technocrats who have
pledged not to seek re-election, said he expected donors would provide
nearly all of the requested funds.

Elections for a new government are planned next year.

"We don't need troops, we need development workers," he stressed.

Haiti needs 1.3 billion dollars over two years to rebuild, according to an
assessment by Haiti, the European Commission, the Inter American
Development Bank (IDB), the United Nations and the World Bank.

More than half the money has already been promised. The IDB has committed
to extending 400 million dollars, the United States 232 million dollars,
and Canada 135 million dollars.

Cabinet chief Raymond Lafontant said any new program must avoid the errors
of the past and that local participants must be involved in the process
this time round.

"One cannot take the model of ancient schemes, programs managed by the
government and the international community, but that did not involve local
actors," Lafontant said during a break from deliberations.

Funds will likely be managed through a government coordinated program with
the donor community and civil corporations.

A decade ago, donors promised massive assistance to Haiti but the effort
quickly foundered.

Now, donors including the World Bank say there is an opportunity to help
Haiti while the interim government is in power, with improved management of
the aid.

The US-backed interim government took over after then president Jean
Bertrand Aristide fled a popular revolt February 29. The country was rocked
by ensuing riots and then engulfed by floods.

"Haiti was once the world's richest colony," United Nations Children's Fund
(UNICEC) deputy executive director Kul Gautam told the conference.

"For the last 100 years it has been the poorest country in the Western
hemisphere," Gautam said.

"We cannot expect a country to prosper and thrive when half its people are
illiterate, half the people have no access to clean drinking water, half
its children do not even finish primary school and two-thirds of its
infants are not immunized," he said.

Haiti's planning and environment minister, Roland Pierre, set out a
four-point rebuilding budget: 173 million dollars to re-establish security
and reform the judicial system; 167 million dollars to improve economic
policy and spur growth; 526 million dollars to develop agriculture and 447
million dollars to decentralize government.

British-based charity Oxfam pressed the United States to improve its offer
by donating 400 million dollars in new aid over the next two years.

Oxfam also pressed for faster, deeper relief of Haiti's external debt,
which it estimated to be more than 1.2 billion dollars.

Protest organizations issued a joint statement saying the development
program risked failure because it had not involved Haitians sufficiently in
the planning.

"It (the development plan) has no legitimacy among Haitians and is in large
part designed by and for the benefit of foreigners and an unconstitutional
regime," said Melinda Miles, co-director of the Quixote Center, which
describes itself as a faith-based, social justice center.

The protester groups criticized plans for free-trade zones, which they
described as homes for sweatshops, expressed outrage over "continuing human
rights abuses," and warned that the new loans to Haiti would increase its
debt burden unless the existing debt was cancelled.