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Haiti PM begs for quake aid

Haiti's Prime minister says the world must map out a long term strategyfor the quake hit country, after meeting immediate needs for food,water and healthcare.

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Source: AFP


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Haiti's Prime minister says the world must map out a long term strategy for the quake hit country, after meeting immediate needs for food, water and healthcare.

Speaking in Montreal, Prime minister Jean Max Bellerive says Haiti faces a 'colossal' reconstruction effort.

"I just want to say that the people of Haiti will need to be helped to face this colossal work of reconstruction," Bellerive told world officials including US Secretary of State Hillary

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Clinton.

Long path ahead: Canadian PM

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned of a long path ahead to rebuild Haiti and urged the world to hash out a "coordinated" plan for the ill-starred country.

"It was not an exaggeration to say that at least 10 years of hard work awaits the world in Haiti," Harper said.

Donor countries had agreed to hold a full conference on aid to Haiti at the UN headquarters in New York in March, Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said.

Nearly two weeks after the disaster, which killed around 150,000 people and left a million homeless, international powers meeting in Montreal heard that it would take at least a decade to rebuild the stricken Caribbean nation.

Scavengers killed

Haitian police shot two people in the head as scavengers plundered the debris in the ruined heart of Port-au-Prince, while thousands more people joined a mass exodus from squalid tent camps in the capital.

"The country is ravaged, I ask myself how it can be rebuilt after this catastrophe. The Haitian government is very corrupt," said Gesnel Faustin, 29, living in a tent outside Haiti's destroyed

presidential palace.

Haiti's President Rene Preval, in a statement from Port-au-Prince, urged the world to urgently airlift a further 200,000 tents and 36 million ready-to-eat ration packs before the country's rainy season starts in May.

Aid trickling in slowly

International rescuers led by 20,000 US troops have struggled to get enough aid in the capital and badly-hit towns near the epicentre of the 7.0-magnitude quake, increasing fears about post-quake security.

A group of Haitian police, trying to keep control among a desperate population after the quake which was also wrecked the city prison, opened fire on a warehouse in the capital where many looters were hiding out.

An AFP photographer inside the building said two men were shot in the head, one of whom received medical attention.

Two others were lying prone on the floor, one lifeless. The other was treated for a serious head wound.

Bulldozers used to clear corpses

Bulldozers cleared corpse-filled houses elsewhere in the city centre, as hopes dimmed of finding more miracle survivors in the rubble. The last, a man who survived for 11 days by drinking cola, was found on Saturday.

The UN said more than 235,000 Haitians have taken advantage of free buses to flee the filthy conditions in Port-au-Prince for more hygienic camps outside the capital.

Others have used private transport.

Health Minister Alex Larsen said tents were being readied for 400,000 quake victims at mini-villages outside the capital that will initially hold 20,000 people, and in the long term accommodate around one million.

Meanwhile, Nobel Peace Prize winning NGO Handicap International is moving fast to help Haiti deal with the futures of the many amputees.

"The first plane-load of short-term DynaCast prosthetics is already in the country," said Wendy Batson, executive director of the US branch of Handicap International.

"We're setting up a database and moving in the medical equipment we need so that as soon as stumps are healed enough after surgery, we can put on DynaCast prosthetics, which last four to six months," she said.

Batson said the disabling injuries in Haiti "surpass anything we've ever seen anywhere else".


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