"Bloodied" Haiti and donors look at recovery plans

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haiti could start relocating homeless earthquake survivors from its ruined capital this week, but it will need at least five to 10 years of international help to rebuild from the catastrophe, the government said on Monday.

Appealing for long-term support from foreign donors meeting in Montreal, Canada, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told them his people had been "bloodied, martyred and ruined" by the January 12 quake that killed up to 200,000 and left hundreds of thousands more Haitians injured and homeless.

Bellerive thanked the world community for its help so far, but said "more and more and more" was needed to rebuild a fragile Caribbean state which even before the quake was the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.

"What we're looking for is a long-term (development) commitment ... At least five to 10 years," he said.

As the huge ongoing relief operation for Haiti turns from rescue to recovery, authorities have said they are looking to relocate at least 400,000 survivors -- now sheltering in more than 400 sprawling makeshift camps across Port-au-Prince -- in temporary tent villages outside the wrecked city.

"We have to evacuate the streets and relocate the people," Communications Minister Marie Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said. "We hope we will be able to start at the end of the week."

Health Minister Alex Larsen said 1 million Haitians had been displaced from their homes in the Port-au-Prince area. The government had tents for 400,000 to be used in the new, temporary settlements, but would need more.

Bellerive said in Montreal President Rene Preval had called him to ask donors for a further 200,000 tents. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and representatives of 10 other countries attended the donors' meeting.

The United States has offered to host a pledging conference of international aid donors at the United Nations in March, Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said in Montreal.

Almost daily aftershocks have shaken Port-au-Prince since the quake, raising the possibility the city eventually might have to be rebuilt on a safer location, away from dangerous geological fault lines.

"In 30 seconds, Haiti lost 60 percent of its GDP (gross domestic product)," Bellerive said, referring to excessive centralization in the capital. "So we must decentralize." He noted that already people had streamed from the capital.

Nearly two weeks after the massive magnitude-7.0 quake demolished swaths of the Haitian capital and other cities, the huge U.S.-led international relief operation is struggling to feed, house and care for hundreds of thousands of hungry, homeless survivors, many of them injured.

Facing persistent complaints by desperate survivors that tons of aid flown in was not reaching them on the ground, U.S. troops, U.N. peacekeepers and aid workers have widened and intensified the distribution of food and water.

TRUCKLOADS OF BODIES STILL BEING BURIED

In the debris-strewn streets of Port-au-Prince, U.S. Army troops travelling in Humvees fanned out carrying doctors, food and water to some of the survivors' camps.

At the Saint Louis high school, where refugees camped out in makeshift tents and huts, U.S. medics attended long lines of injured Haitians, many of them children.

"We're driving around, letting people know we're here to help. We've treated 200 people today," Lieutenant Larry West of the U.S. 82nd Airborne told Reuters.

At Titayen, on a plain about six miles (10 km) north of the capital, trucks were still arriving daily bringing bodies for burial in a mass grave.

Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon told the Montreal meeting that donors stood ready to help, but basic questions about the recovery strategy first needed be thrashed out.

"There's the question, for example, of whether we'll rebuild on the present site of Port-au-Prince," Cannon told CBC television, citing the threat of future quakes.

Haitian authorities said last week they initially planned to move, with the aid of foreign partners, a first wave of 100,000 survivors to tent villages of 10,000 each at Croix Des Bouquets, just northeast of Port-au-Prince.

The Pan American Health Organisation has said there has so far been no sign of a feared outbreak of contagious disease among the survivors.

Some of the food handouts in the capital have turned unruly, forcing U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police to fire shots in the air to restore order.

World Food Program officials estimated some aid had reached more than two-thirds of the survivor camps.

Before the quake hit, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and several lending nations had already forgiven a great deal of Haiti's debt, simply on the grounds of need.

Last week, Haiti's neighbour on the island of Hispaniola, Dominican Republic, proposed to donors the creation of a $10 billion, five-year assistance program for Haiti.

Bellerive said in Montreal the government had received signals a quake might be coming. "We must admit that our geological technicians had warned us of the possibility of an earthquake but dealing with social conflicts, such as the fight against poverty, meant we didn't have the time or the means to take the measures needed to limit the damage," he said.

(Additional reporting by Jackie Frank, Matthew Bigg and Joseph Guyler Delva in Port-au-Prince, and Randall Palmer in Montreal; Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Eric Beech)

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