Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive urged international donors to step up support to rebuild his country, insisting Monday his government can provide leadership after a killer earthquake.
"The Haitian government is working in precarious conditions but it can provide the leadership that people expect," Bellerive told world officials holding emergency talks in Montreal to hash out plans to rebuild Haiti.
"The top priority right now is to satisfy the vital needs of victims like food and water, shelter and health care," he said, nearly two weeks after a massive magnitude 7.0 temblor devastated the impoverished Caribbean nation.
Citing the "colossal" reconstruction effort to come, Bellerive urged the international community to provide "massive support" to his country as it struggles to help the injured and destitute.
"The extent of the task requires that we do more, that we do better and, without a doubt, that we work differently," he said.
International allies, aid groups and volunteers have been leading relief efforts after the government was left scrambling by the temblor that leveled much of the Port-au-Prince capital region, leaving more than 150,000 dead and a million homeless.
Aid agency Oxfam has added its voice to the growing calls for world powers to cancel Haiti's large international debt and deliver on the International Monetary Fund's pledge to turn a 100-million-dollar interest-free loan to Haiti into a grant.
"Expecting Haiti to repay billions of dollars as the country struggles to overcome one of the worst natural disasters in recent memory would be both cruel and unnecessary," Oxfam International executive director Jeremy Hobbs said in a statement.
Speaking before the start of the Montreal aid conference attended by officials from a dozen countries, the United Nations and other international groups, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was "optimistic that we can put together a good plan."
The Montreal talks were expected to lay the groundwork for a full-fledged donors conference on Haiti in the coming weeks.
Washington has taken a frontline role in the emergency response to the January 12 disaster, sending in tens of thousands of troops and rescue teams and anchoring a hospital ship offshore to treat injured Haitians.
Canada's conservative government is keen to shore up political support for Canada's role in assisting Haiti as it faces growing protests at home for its decision to prorogue parliament until March while it deals with the Haiti crisis.
"Know that Canada, the group of friends of Haiti and the international community and non-governmental groups are pledging our support during this period of crisis and beyond," Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon told Bellerive.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, founder of the international charity Doctors Without Borders, was also participating in the six-hour closed-door talks.
The officials were discussing how to streamline delivery of food, water, drugs and medical supplies to the swelling number of people living in makeshift camps around the shattered Haitian capital.
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, that would take decades and require a long-term commitment of resources.
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.
Foreign ministers and other officials from Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Mexico, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Japan and Spain were also participating in the talks.
They were joined by representatives 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.
Copyright 2010  AFP American Edition
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