19 Jan 2010 01:59:12 GMT
Source: Reuters
(For full coverage, click on [nHAITI])
* More U.S. Marines expected to arrive in Haiti
* U.N. seeks 3,500 additional peacekeepers
* EU pledges more than 400 million euros in aid
* Food is airdropped, Army sets up at golf club (Adds U.S. on Haitian orphans, donor conferences, ambassador)
By Andrew Cawthorne and Catherine Bremer
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 18 (Reuters) - U.S. troops protected aid handouts and the United Nations sought extra peacekeepers in earthquake-shattered Haiti on Monday as marauding looters emptied wrecked shops and desperate survivors began to receive medical care and air-dropped food.
Hundreds of scavengers and looters swarmed over damaged stores in Port-au-Prince, seizing goods and fighting among themselves, but some signs of normality returned as street vendors emerged with fruit and vegetables for sale. In the evening, gunfire could be heard in the wrecked capital city.
"We do not have the capacity to fix this situation. Haiti needs help ... the Americans are welcome here. But where are they? We need them here on the street with us," said policeman Dorsainvil Robenson, deployed to chase looters in the capital.
Crowds gathered to plead for food, water and jobs outside installations being used by the United Nations, U.S. military and international relief agencies. Jordanian peacekeepers kicked Haitians and fired in the air over a crowd clamoring outside the Port-au-Prince airport, witnesses said.
"Ninety percent of the people are still sleeping on the streets. They're homeless ... they're distraught," U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten said on PBS's "News Hour."
But given the devastation, Merten said progress on aid distribution was "reasonably good."
Some 2,200 Marines with heavy earth-moving equipment, medical aid and helicopters were arriving on Monday, and the White House said more than 11,000 U.S. military personnel are on the ground, on ships offshore or en route. The U.S. military airdropped packets of food and water, and hoped the deliveries would be easier once the port is reopened.
U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said he had recommended to the Security Council that 1,500 police and 2,000 troops be added to the 9,000-member U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti.
World leaders have promised massive amounts of assistance to rebuild Haiti since Tuesday's 7.0 magnitude quake killed as many as 200,000 people and left Port-au-Prince in ruins.
Haitian President Rene Preval, whose government was left crippled by the quake, appealed to donors to focus not just on immediate aid for Haitians but also on long-term development of the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
"We cannot just cure the wounds of the earthquake. We must develop the economy, agriculture, education, health and reinforce democratic institutions," he said at a conference of donors in neighboring Dominican Republic. [ID:nN18187662]
BACK TO AFRICA
Dominican President Leonel Fernandez proposed the creation of a $2 billion-a-year fund to finance Haiti's recovery over five years. [ID:nN18186669].
European Union institutions and member states have offered more than 400 million euros ($575.6 million) in emergency and longer-term assistance to Haiti. [ID:nLDE60H1FI]
U.S. President Barack Obama spoke with Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva on the need for the two governments and Canada to take the lead in organizing donor conferences, a spokeswoman at the presidential palace in Brasilia said.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, the U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti, pitched straight into the aid effort by unloading bottles of water from a plane after landing in Port-au-Prince.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, meanwhile, proposed that African nations offer Haitians the chance to resettle in "the land of their ancestors". [ID:nLDE60H1LC]
"Africa should offer Haitians the chance to return home. It is their right," Wade said on his website. Local media quoted Senegalese officials as saying the West African country was ready to offer parcels of fertile land to Haitians.
The United States agreed to take in Haitian orphans legally confirmed as eligible for adoption in another country by the Haitian government and who are being adopted by U.S. citizens. [ID:nN18133656]
SECURITY CRITICAL
Preval said U.S. troops will help U.N. peacekeepers keep order on Haiti's increasingly lawless streets, where overstretched police and U.N. peacekeepers have been unable to provide full security.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said U.S. forces would not play a police role but would defend themselves and "have the right to defend innocent Haitians and members of the international community if they see something happen."
Another U.S. military official said the violence was isolated and was not impeding the humanitarian aid mission.
With people becoming more desperate by the day, looters swarmed smashed shops in downtown Port-au-Prince, fighting each other with knives, hammers, ice-picks and rocks while police tried to disperse them with gunfire. At least two suspected looters were shot dead on Sunday, witnesses said.
Mayors, businessmen and bankers told Preval that restoring security was essential for reviving at least some commercial activity. The sprawling Croix de Bossales food market reopened but with the banks still shut, "People have no money to buy anything," said Joseph Desilme, who works at the market.
SLOW PROGRESS IN HELPING INJURED
Streets piled with debris slowed the delivery of medical and food supplies but there were signs of progress as international medical teams took over damaged hospitals where seriously injured people had lain untreated for days.
More than 30 countries have rushed rescue teams, doctors, field hospitals, food, medicine and other supplies to Haiti, choking the one-runway airport where the control tower was knocked out by the quake.
Rescue teams raced against time to find people alive under the rubble of collapsed buildings, with more successful rescues of survivors reported six days after the disaster. Tens of thousands are still believed buried under the rubble.
U.S. military officers hope to reopen Port-au-Prince's shattered seaport in two or three days but are relying for now on airdrops to distribute food and water by helicopter. Desperate Haitians jostled to grab the packets thrown from helicopters that swooped down over camp sites.
A C-17 cargo plane, flying round-trip from Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina, air-dropped 14,000 packaged "meals ready to eat" and 14,000 quarts of water to quake survivors, the U.S. military said.
The U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne set up a base at the Petionville Club, organizing orderly queues to distribute water bottles and meal packs to the 50,000 survivors who pitched tents on Haiti's only golf course. Exhausted soldiers slept on the tennis courts.
Fuel prices have doubled and there were long queues outside gas stations, where cars, motorbikes and people with jerrycans have lined up. Haitian police stand guard at some.
Although a few street markets began selling vegetables, charcoal, chicken and pork, tens of thousands of survivors across the city were still clamoring for help. (Additional reporting by Tom Brown and Joseph Guyler Delva in Port-au-Prince, Patrick Worsnip at the United Nations, Frank Jack Daniel in Caracas, Mark John and Diadie Ba in Dakar, Tabassum Zakaria in Washington and David Brunnstrom in Brussels, writing by Anthony Boadle and Pascal Fletcher, editing by Kieran Murray and Bill Trott)