25556: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti needs help with roads, jobs, training-PM (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Mark Felsenthal

     UNITED NATIONS, June 30 (Reuters) - Haiti needs international help
building roads, training workers, creating jobs and attracting investment,
Haitian Prime Minister Gerard Latortue said on Thursday.
     But Latortue said international aid and debt relief initiatives are
neglecting Haiti and Caribbean nations.
     "The small island developing countries seem to be those who have been
left out of international cooperation," Latortue said at a three-day
meeting of the U.N. Economic and Social Council.
     "There's been a lot of talk of Africa and certain Asian countries, but
I've hardly heard anything said about these small countries of the
Caribbean," he said.
     Latortue, who characterized his country as "one of the poorest nations
on the planet," spoke to a conference aimed at drumming up support for
greater commitments among nations to ease poverty around the world.
     Debt relief and economic development among poor nations are on the
agenda of a series of meetings of world leaders this year, including the
Group of Eight meeting in Scotland next month.
     The G8 earlier this month agreed to write off more than $40 billion of
debts owed by some of the world's poorest countries to multilateral
lenders. The agreement provides 100 percent write-offs for 18 countries,
mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa, with more countries to qualify later.
     Bolivia, Guyana, Honduras, and Nicaragua are the only Western
Hemisphere nations to qualify for the first debt relief exercise. None
among the additional 20 nations on the cusp of qualifying or within
striking distance are in the Americas.
     Aid agencies calculate that 62 countries need 100 percent debt relief
if they are to meet the Millennium Development Goals, which were agreed at
U.N. level in 2000 and include halving poverty and disease by 2015.
     Haiti has been roiled by political and gang violence since a bloody
rebellion ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004.
     The Caribbean nation of 8 million people is the poorest in the
Americas, with most Haitians scraping by on income of a dollar a day.
     U.N. diplomats said they hope the three-day conference of the Economic
and Social Council will lead to pressure on rich countries to give more
help to poor nations. But they acknowledged that economic development
usually takes a back seat to security concerns.
     "We believe our political message will go to the G8 and hopefully the
G8 will go forward," said Munir Akram, president of the U.N. council and
Pakistan's ambassador to the United Nations.
     "So our endeavor here inevitably will have some impact -- how much
remains to be seen," he said.