* Preval, Obama to meet in Wash­ing­ton on Wednesday

* Job cre­ation a pri­or­ity for Hait­ian government

PORT-AU-PRINCE, March 8 (Reuters) — Hait­ian Pres­i­dent Rene Preval plans to tell U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama on Wednes­day that food aid to the earthquake-devastated Caribbean nation should be stopped because of the risk of dam­ag­ing its economy.

The two men will meet at the White House in the wake of a Jan. 12 quake that killed 230,000 peo­ple, accord­ing to Hait­ian gov­ern­ment esti­mates, crip­pled the econ­omy and dev­as­tated much of the cap­i­tal Port-au-Prince and other cities.

Dona­tions of food and water have proved a life­line for more than 1.2 mil­lion peo­ple dis­placed by the quake, but Preval told a news con­fer­ence on Mon­day the aid could in the long term hurt the econ­omy of the poor­est coun­try in the West­ern Hemisphere.

“I will tell him (Obama) that this first phase of assis­tance is fin­ished,” said Preval, stand­ing in front of the ruined pres­i­den­tial palace in Port-au-Prince.

“If they con­tinue to send us aid from abroad — water and food — it will be in com­pe­ti­tion with the national Hait­ian pro­duc­tion and Hait­ian com­merce,” he said.

Preval said the pri­or­ity should instead be to cre­ate employ­ment in Haiti, a coun­try where a high per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion lacked work even before the quake.

The Hait­ian gov­ern­ment, work­ing with the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity, is prepar­ing a mas­ter plan for recon­struc­tion that would have ambi­tious goals, Preval said after a meet­ing with Cana­dian Gov­er­nor Gen­eral Michaelle Jean.

A trust fund with vot­ing and non­vot­ing board mem­bers would man­age donor funds, Preval said.

RECONSTRUCTION

Pri­or­i­ties for recon­struc­tion include strength­en­ing build­ings to with­stand future earth­quakes and reha­bil­i­tat­ing the envi­ron­ment, much of which is denuded, to pro­tect against flood­ing from trop­i­cal storms and hur­ri­canes, which last bat­tered Haiti in 2008.

Some $38 mil­lion was needed for storm pro­tec­tion, Preval said.

Reopen­ing the country’s schools was also key, Preval said, though he gave no date for when that would hap­pen. Edu­ca­tion is con­sid­ered crit­i­cal to devel­op­ment in Haiti, where 38 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion is under age 15 and nearly half of those 15 and older are illiterate.

“I will also tell him (Obama) that our vision is to rebuild Haiti and if we don’t take advan­tage of this his­toric event to rein­vent Haiti, to rein­vent Port-au-Prince, we will be mak­ing a mis­take of his­tor­i­cal pro­por­tions,” Preval said.

“Our gen­er­a­tion has the oblig­a­tion to shoul­der this respon­si­bil­ity,” he said.

Many Haitians have crit­i­cized the government’s per­for­mance since the earth­quake and argued that Preval has not done enough to com­mu­ni­cate with the peo­ple or to mar­shal gov­ern­ment aid, instead leav­ing inter­na­tional aid groups to fill the gap.

Jean’s two-day visit is sig­nif­i­cant because she was born and raised in Port-au-Prince, arriv­ing in Canada as a refugee, and has worked to pro­mote Haiti’s needs since the quake.

“We are here … to say to Haitians that they are not alone … We have suf­fered with you,” she said in an impas­sioned speech after her meet­ing with Preval.

As Canada’s gov­er­nor gen­eral, Jean rep­re­sents Britain’s Queen Eliz­a­beth, who is Canada’s head of state.

(Edit­ing by Jane Sut­ton and Paul Simao)