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— Former U.S. President Bill Clinton reprimanded wealthy nations Wednesday for coughing up just 3 percent so far of the hundreds of millions of dollars in aid they had promised for Haiti.
In his role as U.N. special envoy to Haiti, Clinton told the Security Council that President Rene Preval, Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis and other government officials are doing as good a job as can be expected of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
"I think they're doing what they should be doing. They need the rest of us to do more," Clinton said following his address.
Clinton, who took on the job, for which he receives $1 a year in salary, in May said that Haiti's 9 million people need outside help to overcome years of misgovernment, abuse and neglect.
"They've only gotten a pittance of the aid that was pledged to them," he said. "We can't get to January with only $21 million of over $761 million in commitments dispersed down there."
Haiti already was suffering from a food crisis and political deadlock when four tropical storms battered it last fall.
The island nation lost 800 people and suffered $1 billion in damage, deepening the pervasive hunger and poverty and undermining the fragile political stability that had been achieved only five years after a bloody rebellion.
