Haiti president asks UN for long-term help to recover from killer storms

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Haiti's president implored leaders at the UN General Assembly on Friday to commit to long-term solutions to help his nation after a series of hurricanes and tropical storms killed hundreds. Though thanking the international community for food aid and other assistance, President Rene Preval said he feared that a "paradigm of charity" would not end cycles of poverty and disaster. "Once this first wave of humanitarian compassion is exhausted, we will be left as always, truly alone, to face new catastrophes and see restarted, as if in a ritual, the same exercises of mobilization," Preval said. Preval said it will take years to recover from the four killer storms that wiped out at least 60 percent of Haitian agriculture and destroyed roads, bridges and homes across the country in late August and early September.