By JONATHAN M. KATZ, The Asso­ci­ated Press

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/21/AR2010032100998_2.html

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — One restored a Hait­ian pres­i­dent to power; the other flew him back out again. For­mer U.S. pres­i­dents Bill Clin­ton and George W. Bush are vis­it­ing Haiti on Mon­day, remind­ing the coun­try of its tumul­tuous recent past just as frus­tra­tion over an uneven earth­quake relief effort is bring­ing pol­i­tics back to the surface.

The ex-presidents are spear­head­ing U.S. fundrais­ing in response to the Jan. 12 earth­quake. Tapped by Pres­i­dent Barack Obama for the role, they are mak­ing the one-day visit to assess recov­ery needs.

Charged mem­o­ries of their poli­cies toward the impov­er­ished Caribbean nation are already mix­ing with frus­tra­tion over deplorable liv­ing con­di­tions among the 1.3 mil­lion home­less quake sur­vivors. Sup­port­ers of ousted Pres­i­dent Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide have sched­uled protests for Mon­day — demand­ing the return of their exiled leader and plead­ing for more aid.

“We are going to bring our mes­sage to the pres­i­dents, that our sit­u­a­tion here is no good. The way peo­ple are liv­ing in Haiti is no way for any­one to live,” said Fan­fan Fenelon, a 30-year-old res­i­dent of the Bel Air slum.

Mon­day will be Bush’s first trip to Haiti. Clin­ton, who is the U.N. spe­cial envoy to the coun­try, has made two vis­its since the quake and five in the past two years. He also vis­ited as president.

The pair will arrive in a coun­try strug­gling to feed and shel­ter vic­tims of the magnitude-7 quake, which killed an esti­mated 230,000 peo­ple. Hun­dreds of thou­sands still live in dan­ger­ous camps, some already flood­ing ahead of the April rainy season.

On Sun­day, a small earth­quake caused an apart­ment build­ing to col­lapse in the north­ern city of Cap-Haitien, killing at least three peo­ple, accord­ing to U.N. spokesman Louicius Eugene. Three peo­ple were res­cued from the rubble.

Pres­i­dent Rene Preval’s gov­ern­ment has crit­i­cized non-governmental orga­ni­za­tions for not being account­able to the Hait­ian state. In turn, Hait­ian offi­cials have been accused of inef­fec­tive­ness and cor­rup­tion. On Tues­day, a group of Hait­ian and U.S. human-rights advo­cates will ask the Orga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States for an inquiry into why $2.2 bil­lion in aid has not helped more people.

Those exchanges will only grow more heated with the approach of the March 31 donors’ con­fer­ence at the United Nations, where the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment will ask for $11.5 billion.

Enter Clin­ton and Bush, an unlikely duo that have arguably shaped Haiti’s his­tory as much as any­one alive today.

Clin­ton presided over a refugee cri­sis borne of the 1991 ouster of Aris­tide, Haiti’s first demo­c­ra­t­i­cally elected pres­i­dent. He returned Aris­tide to power in 1994 with a force of 20,000 U.S. troops.

Many of the country’s elite have dis­liked him ever since. Aristide’s lus­ter dimmed for oth­ers as his two non­con­sec­u­tive terms gave way to accu­sa­tions of rigged elec­tions, pock­eted for­eign aid and attacks on opponents.

Bush is acutely remem­bered by many Haitians — espe­cially the thou­sands in Port-au-Prince’s teem­ing slums — as the U.S. leader whose admin­is­tra­tion char­tered the plane that flew Aris­tide back into exile dur­ing a 2004 rebel­lion, then backed an interim gov­ern­ment that car­ried out reprisals against his supporters.

“We don’t have a very good ‘sou­venir’ of Pres­i­dent Bush, as you might sup­pose,” said Patrick Elie, who served as a defense offi­cial under both Aris­tide and Preval. “I hope that this cri­sis is not another oppor­tu­nity to weaken the Hait­ian state even more.”

Busi­ness lead­ers and oth­ers in posi­tions of power are excited for the pres­i­dents’ visit.

“The fact that two pres­i­dents of the United States are com­ing to visit is proof that the sub­ject of the recon­struc­tion of Haiti is not a par­ti­san issue,” said Patrick Dela­tour, Haiti’s tourism min­is­ter and part-owner of a con­struc­tion com­pany who was tasked by Preval with lead­ing recon­struc­tion efforts.

The non­profit Clin­ton Bush Haiti Fund has raised $37 mil­lion from 220,000 indi­vid­u­als includ­ing Hol­ly­wood actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who gave $1 mil­lion, and Obama, who among other dona­tions gave $200,000 of his Nobel Peace Prize. About $4 mil­lion has gone to such orga­ni­za­tions as Habi­tat for Human­ity, the Uni­ver­sity of Miami/Project Medishare mobile hos­pi­tal in Port-au-Prince and the U.S. branch of the Irish char­ity Con­cern Worldwide.

The rest has yet to be allo­cated. There is heated dis­cus­sion, inside Haiti and out, about where future funds should go.

James Mor­rell, direc­tor of the Washington-based Haiti Democ­racy Project, said he wel­comes the ex-presidents’ efforts but that gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion will block any seri­ous effort to develop the country.

“They need to go back to Obama and say, ‘Let’s not put all our eggs in one bas­ket,’” he said.

Oth­ers want noth­ing to do with the visit at all.

“Those peo­ple have a lot of money. They could do some­thing for Haiti, but they haven’t done it,” said So An, a pow­er­ful leader of Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas party. “I don’t want any words from now on, I want action.”

On a street cor­ner in the Bel Air slum this week­end the debate over the pres­i­dents’ visit was already under way.

Neigh­bors crowded into a nar­row alley behind par­tially col­lapsed build­ings to shout their opin­ions: Bush is bad, Preval inef­fec­tive and Clin­ton dis­ap­point­ing as U.N. envoy.

But all agreed — they’ll take any help they can get.

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Asso­ci­ated Press writer Mike Melia con­tributed to this report.