Will endemic corruption suck away aid to Haiti?

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Despite the best intentions of the international community, Haitians have little faith they will see the billions of dollars in aid pledged to rebuild their earthquake-shattered country, which international monitors rate as one of the world''s most corrupt.

From successful businessmen to refugees scraping to survive in squalid tent camps, Haitians said they expect that a good portion of any money sent will flow straight into the pockets of corrupt government officials.

"The U.S. government needs to come here to help the Haitian people," said Jean-Louis Jerome, a construction worker who has lived beneath tarpaulins in a park with nine relatives since their house collapsed during the January 12 earthquake.

"If you give the aid to the person at the top, he will just put it in his pocket."

Transparency International, a group that studies government corruption, rates Haiti''s government as one of the world''s most corrupt and least effective, despite efforts by President Rene Preval to combat the chronic problem.

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive was in Canada at a meeting of a dozen nations to assess Haiti''s immediate needs and develop a strategy to rebuild the country after the devastating earthquake, which killed up to 200,000 people and left the capital city and other areas in ruins.

The donors in Montreal decided on Monday to hold an international aid pledging conference at U.N. headquarters in New York in March. Aid pledges to Haiti have already mounted into the billions.

Clifford Rouzeau, co-owner of three restaurants in the Haitian capital, has been distributing free food to more than 1,000 people every day instead of reopening. He said he hoped the crisis would end Haiti''s long history of government theft.

"I''m hoping. I''ve got my fingers crossed. The people here deserve better than they actually have," he said.

"You have a government that steals everything and won''t give anything back to the country. You have a government that doesn''t feel it necessary to put police out in the street. Do something! Put canteens all over. Just do something."

COMBATING CORRUPTION

Cabinet members, who had only been in place for two months before the quake, insist things have changed despite years in which international aid seemed to fizzle before doing anything to ease rampant poverty in the Western Hemisphere''s poorest nation.