(8 Jul 2009) SHOTLIST
1. Wide of special United Nations envoy for Haiti and former US President Bill Clinton walking surrounded by UN staff and security
2. Haitian President Rene Preval walking
3. Various of Clinton and Preval walking and greeting people
4. UPSOUND man with a US flag shouting (English) "I love you. I love you."
5. Various of Clinton and Preval laying flowers at a monument to tropical storm victims
6. Various of earth works being carried out on the banks of the La Quinte river
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Bill Clinton, special UN envoy for Haiti and former US president:
"I learnt a great deal and now for the rest of the time I'm going to meet with donors and other groups from Haitian society and just try to keep learning and then go home to New York and go back to work."
8. Clinton visiting a cooperative that harvests and exports mangoes
9. Various of production line
10. Clinton listening
11. Mangos being sorted
STORYLINE
Former US President Bill Clinton took his Haiti relief effort to the seaside city of Gonaives on Tuesday, a city that was nearly destroyed last year by tropical storms and still resembles mud-caked maze of partially rebuilt homes and shops.
Clinton, the new special United Nations envoy to Haiti, viewed river control projects and visited a hospital that served as an emergency shelter during the two storms that ravaged the town.
Four storms hit Haiti in all, killing nearly 800 people nationwide and causing 1 (b) billion US dollars in damage to irrigation, bridges and roads.
Aid has poured into the Gonaives region but many homes and shops remain damaged and the area remains vulnerable to flooding because the surrounding hills have been stripped of trees to create farm fields and make charcoal for cooking.
It was Clinton's first trip to Gonaives, but he was greeted like a returning hero.
People stood on piles of rubble to catch a glimpse of Clinton's motorcade as it wove through the rocky streets of Gonaives, one of the poorest cities in a chronically troubled country considered the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.
The Haitian government and its international backers hope to create 150-thousand to 200-thousand jobs nationwide over the next two years.
Many of those jobs will come from projects to rebuild roads and shore up erosion-prone hillsides.
Clinton also visited a Venezuela-financed project where at least a dozen yellow backhoes and bulldozers dredged the La Quinte River, which inundated Gonaives last September like a backed-up septic tank.
He examined an erosion-control terracing project that UN directors said was still only 10 percent financed.
Gonaives has been disappointed by aid promises before.
More than 70 (m) million US dollars in aid poured in after tropical storm Jeanne killed an estimated 2 thousand people in 2004, but most went to immediate relief and did nothing to prevent last year's floods.
On Tuesday, Clinton and Preval laid flowers at a stone memorial to the victims of last year's Tropical Storm Hanna and Hurricane Ike as a priest flung holy water.
Clinton's three-day visit, which ends Wednesday, is the former president's second trip to Haiti this year.
He accompanied UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to Port-au-Prince in March, two months before being named as a special UN envoy.

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