Bush, Clinton's trip to Haiti stirs passions

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - One restored a Haitian president to power; the other flew him back out again. Former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are visiting Haiti today, reminding the country of its tumultuous recent past just as frustration over an uneven earthquake relief effort is bringing politics back to the surface.

The ex-presidents are spearheading U.S. fundraising in response to the Jan. 12 earthquake. Tapped by President Barack Obama for the role, they are making the one-day visit to assess recovery needs.

Charged memories of their policies toward the impoverished Caribbean nation are already mixing with frustration over deplorable living conditions among the 1.3 million homeless quake survivors. Supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide scheduled protests for today, demanding the return of their exiled leader and pleading for more aid.

It will be Bush's first trip to Haiti. Clinton, who is the UN special envoy to the country, has made two visits since the quake and five in the past two years. He also visited as president.

The pair will arrive in a country struggling to feed and shelter victims of the magnitude-7 quake, which killed an estimated 230,000 people. Hundreds of thousands still live in dangerous camps, some already flooding ahead of the April rainy season.

Early Sunday, a small earthquake in northern Haiti has collapsed an apartment building in Cap-Haitien and killed two people, the UN said. Five people were pulled out of the rubble, but two died.

On the matter of aid, President René Préval's government has criticized nongovernmental organizations for not being accountable to the Haitian state. In turn, Haitian officials have been accused of ineffectiveness and corruption.

Tuesday, a group of Haitian and U.S. human-rights advocates will ask the Organization of American States for an inquiry into why $2.2 billion in aid has not helped more people.

Those exchanges will only grow more heated with the approach of the March 31 donors' conference at the United Nations, where the Haitian government will ask for $11.5 billion.

Enter Clinton and Bush, an unlikely duo that have arguably shaped Haiti's history as much as anyone alive today.

Clinton presided over a refugee crisis born of the 1991 ouster of Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected president. He returned Aristide to power in 1994 with a force of 20,000 U.S. troops. Many of the country's elite have disliked him ever since.

Bush is acutely remembered by many Haitians, especially the thousands in Port-au-Prince's teeming slums, as the U.S. leader whose administration chartered the plane that flew Aristide back into exile during a 2004 rebellion, then backed an interim government that carried out reprisals against his supporters.

"We don't have a very good 'souvenir' of President Bush, as you might suppose," said Patrick Elie, who served as a defense official under both Aristide and Préval. "I hope that this crisis is not another opportunity to weaken the Haitian state even more."