Bill Clinton ready to help rebuild Haiti but urgently needs $$

Former United States President Bill Clinton told reporters in New York Sunday he will devote the next three years of his life to helping to rebuild Haiti, which was devastated by an massive earthquake on January 12 this year.

Clinton, who is the United Nations Special Envoy to the country and co-chair of Haiti’s reconstruction commission, said he "wakes up every day sick at heart that we aren't doing more" to help Haiti.

"I don't want to be naive. It's going to be a stretch," Clinton told reporters. "It'll be hard, but I'm excited about it...I am prepared to spend three years on it," he declared.

Clinton said there is much to be done on several fronts. "In the camps, we need more sanitation and protection from blow down. In the streets, we need more jobs. We need to begin reconstruction. Then do something on the education front," he said.

"Then the health-care system needs to be built. I used to say rebuilt, but then I realised there really wasn't one before," he added. "We'll have to rebuild the infrastructure...We'll have to rebuild the agriculture."

Clinton said last week that he will put pressure on governments that have been slow to deliver on promises to aid Haiti’s reconstruction efforts.

"I'm going to call all those governments ... the ones who said they'll give money to support the Haitian government...I want to try to get them to give the money, and I'm trying to get the others to give me a schedule for when they'll release it," he added.

He said six months after the earthquake that killed an estimated 300,000 people and left about 1.3 million homeless, most governments that promised to help Haiti have not delivered any funds at all.

Clinton said less than two per cent of the US$5.3 billion pledged at a Haiti donors conference in March, at the United Nations, has been handed over to the UN-backed body established to handle it.

The World Bank is also urging donors to deliver on aid pledges in order to keep the reconstruction momentum going. It says to date it has received formal confirmation for only US$98 million.

"We're going to have to be clever," Clinton said. "But if people can see the homes coming back, and if we could put many, many more people to work, I think that would make a huge difference."