Clinton to visit Haiti on Saturday, inspect damage

[February 04, 2010]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will visit Haiti on Saturday to inspect earthquake damage and confer with Haitian and other officials on how to speed humanitarian aid and shape the recovery effort.

At the White House, President Barack Obama scheduled an Oval Office meeting with the two former presidents who have agreed to spearhead private fundraising efforts for the beleaguered Caribbean nation -- Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton.

Hillary Clinton will be the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Haiti since Tuesday's devastating earthquake, which the Red Cross estimates killed 45,000 to 50,000 people.

The White House has said Obama had no immediate plans to visit himself.

Obama spoke with Haitian President Rene Preval on Friday -- two previous attempts to do so had failed because of interference with communications -- and pledged the U.S. would stand with it for the immediate search-and-rescue effort and for the eventual rebuilding.

Preval was among the Haitian officials Clinton planned to meet with Saturday.

"There are going to be many difficult days ahead," Obama said at the White House.

The administration also acknowledged the limits of its initial relief efforts and promised a quick speed-up in the delivery of water and other badly needed supplies.

The State Department raised the confirmed U.S. death toll to six, and said 15 other Americans are presumed to have died.

Dr. Rajiv Shah, the White House's designated coordinator of the U.S. relief effort, told reporters at the State Department that the main focus of U.S. efforts was still on recovering trapped survivors. Shah was to accompany Clinton to Haiti.

Shah, who just last week became administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, indicated that relief supplies will begin flowing more freely in the next few days. He said he had pulled together $48 million worth of food assistance, enough to feed the affected 2 million Haitians for several months. He also said 100,000 10-liter containers of water would be there soon.

But he and others also stressed the physical and logistical limits on the U.S. ability to deliver the aid.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the major obstacle was the inability to use the main port in Port-au-Prince, the capital, because of extensive damage. There also is only one airport.

Crowley said Friday's arrival of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, with 19 helicopters on board, was like suddenly having "a second airport." Helicopters immediately began ferrying water and other supplies into Haiti.

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert Gates also noted the constraints on carrying out a full relief effort. He said that while dropping supplies from the air might seem efficient, doing so could backfire and cause rioting as people fight over the goods.

About 4,200 U.S. military personnel were operating within Haiti or from Navy and Coast Guard vessels offshore, the U.S. Southern Command said in an update Friday night.

An additional 6,300 personnel are scheduled to arrive by Monday to help distribute aid and prevent potential rioting among desperate survivors. Officials said that immediately after the quake, one of the Air Force's newest unmanned surveillance aircraft, known as the Global Hawk, was redirected from an undisclosed location to survey the damage in Haiti.

More than 2,200 Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C., were preparing to head Saturday for Haiti aboard three Navy ships -- USS Bataan, USS Carter Hall and USS Fort McHenry -- with a contingent of helicopters.

Obama said Haitians should recognize the difficulties of getting assistance to them immediately.

"It will take time to establish distribution points so that we can ensure that resources are delivered safely and effectively and in an orderly fashion," he said. "But I want the people of Haiti to know that we will do what it takes to save lives and to help them get back on their feet."

But the administration's earlier promises of "help is on the way" turned into grimmer talk Friday: predictions that the situation in Haiti was likely to get much worse before it gets better.

It appeared an effort to pre-empt any criticism of Obama's performance during the administration's first response to a natural disaster, and forestall the kind of public relations nightmare George W. Bush faced after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast in the summer of 2005.

Bush's visit to the White House on Saturday was to be his first since he left office in January 2009. Bill Clinton, already the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, visited Obama at the White House when he was in Washington last week.

After the Asian tsunami in 2004, Bush asked his father, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, to lead the effort to raise private donations.

[Associated Press; By DARLENE SUPERVILLE]

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