Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive urged donors Monday to swing behind his nation's massive reconstruction, as aid groups called for Haiti's billion-dollar foreign debt to be wiped clean.
"I just want to say that the people of Haiti will need to be helped to face this colossal work of reconstruction," Bellerive told international officials as closed-door talks in Montreal began.
"The government of Haiti wants to assure the entire world that it will remember and be worthy of the exceptional sympathy that it receives," he added.
The talks are aimed at defining key strategies to rebuild the country from the ground up in the wake of the 7.0-magnitude quake which struck the Caribbean nation on January 12.
Among those attending were Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, along with officials from a dozen other nations.
"Haiti was victim, once again, of a natural catastrophe beyond measure," Bellerive said.
"My country witnessed not only buildings and infrastructure collapse, but it was viscerally affected by the loss of hundreds of thousands of human lives," he said, adding the police and government offices were decimated.
The January 12 earthquake left 150,000 dead, a million homeless and hundreds of thousands hungry and injured.
"Even now in the midst of inconceivable devastation, we must begin to plan -- to give hope where there is despair by joining with the people of Haiti to develop a common vision and plan for a better life and future", Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said.
"It is here that shared commitment is not enough. Clear vision, coordination and adherence to key principles of aid effectiveness will be essential to accelerate our efforts and avoid duplication," Cannon added.
An umbrella group of Canadian and Haitian aid organizations called on donors here to cancel more than one billion US dollars in foreign debt.
"We hope that you use the weight of your governments to convince international financial institutions to cancel Haiti's entire foreign debt," said Eric Faustin, director of Rocahd, the Coalition of Canadian-Haitian Development Organizations.
Ministers and officials from the United Nations also discussed how to streamline delivery of food, water, drugs and medical supplies to the swelling number of people living in makeshift camps around the shattered capital of Port-au-Prince.
Washington has taken a frontline role in the disaster relief effort, sending in tens of thousands of troops and rescue teams and anchoring a hospital ship offshore to treat injured Haitians.
Television and Internet images of the destitute and dying -- as the able-bodied searched amid the tangled steel and concrete rubble of the capital -- triggered a worldwide outpouring of donations.
Donor countries are seeking to use the groundswell of support for Haiti as an opportunity to transform a country that has historically faced grinding poverty, political corruption and bloodshed.
Diplomats have raised the possibility of a kind of Marshall Plan for the island nation, similar to the US-led postwar reconstruction of Europe, which would take decades and require a colossal commitment of resources and money.
Experts have warned that hundreds of thousands of Haitians will be living off foreign aid and in temporary housing for years to come during the slow reconstruction process. Thousands have been left disabled.
Foreign ministers and other officials from Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Mexico, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Japan and Spain were also present in Montreal.
They were joined by officials from the European Union, the Organization of American States, the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Japan said it would pledge 70 million dollars in aid to Haiti and deploy as many as 300 peacekeepers to the UN mission there.
The Montreal talks were expected to lay the groundwork for a full-fledged donors conference on Haiti in the coming weeks.
Copyright 2010  AFP American Edition
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