Gaining insight

The European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid Karel De Gucht is expected in Haiti on Thursday morning, where he will assess the current and future allocation of relief aid coming from the European bloc.

"His visit will be an opportunity to assess the immediate life-saving humanitarian aid needs, as well as the medium and long-term requirements for reconstruction and rehabilitation of the country," the European Commission said in a statement released Wednesday.

De Gucht will also meet with Haitian and UN authorities, as well as the main aid representatives on the scene, to discuss the coordination of the overall relief effort, the Commission said. He will remain until late Friday.

Earlier this week, the commissioner told the European Parliament in Strasbourg how he assessed the situation in Haiti.

"It is not only about rescuing human lives, but rescuing a country as a whole", de Gucht told the parliamentarians. Members of international organizations had also fallen victim to the catastrophe. This made it more difficult to organize aid on the spot. Urgent medical, technical and logistic help were needed to avoid further risks such as an outbreak of cholera, he said.

Overall, the commission and EU member states have pledged more than 422 million euros ($595 million) in immediate humanitarian relief and longer-term reconstruction aid.

EU-US coordination in the works

Meanwhile, the EU's new foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton headed to Washington on Wednesday, as a strong aftershock measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale rocked Haiti.

Ashton will meet with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then head to New York for talks with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. She had previously been sharply criticized by center-right and liberal deputies in the EU parliament for not heading straight to Haiti, as Clinton and some European officials had already done.

"Just about everybody was in Haiti at the moment when these people are suffering, and Europe was not present," said Joseph Daul, head of the center-right group in the parliament. "If it would have been in our hands, we would have sent someone."

Green group leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit said the EU should not have been acting "on the sidelines."

"If I was the high representative faced with a disaster of this scope, I'd get on the first plane and then come back and tell the Europeans what we should be doing," Cohn-Bendit said. "I think that is the basic minimum."

But Ashton defended her actions to parliamentarians.

"I had nothing to contribute on the ground other than taking up valuable space when planes were unable to land because of the state of the airfield," she said. "I am not a doctor, nor a fire fighter. My place was to bring together co-ordination at EU level and with the UN."

De Gucht said parliament should be more generous in recognizing the efforts put in place by the EU's executive and its member states. He said MEPs did "not pay enough tribute to all the people who have been working since day one in Brussels and on the spot."

EU foreign ministers will be meeting on Brussels on Monday, with Haiti expected to be high on the agenda. EU leaders will hold an additional summit on February 11, with aid to Haiti one of the discussion points.

sac/dpa/AFP
Editor: Susan Houlton