Clintons lend hand to Haiti
Associated Press
CARACOL, Haiti
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton encouraged foreigners to invest in Haiti as she and her husband, Bill, led a star-studded delegation gathered Monday to inaugurate a new industrial park at the center of U.S. efforts to help the country rebuild after the 2010 earthquake.
Actors Sean Penn and Ben Stiller, fashion designer Donna Karan and British business magnate Richard Branson were among the luminaries at the opening of the new Caracol Industrial Park, which is projected to create thousands of jobs more than 100 miles from the quake-ravaged capital of Port-au-Prince.
Hillary Rodham Clinton told a roomful of investors gathered for a luncheon that she had made Haiti a priority when she became secretary of state.
“We had learned that supporting long-term prosperity in Haiti meant more than providing aid,” she said. “It required investments in infrastructure and the economy that would help the Haitian people achieve their own dreams.
“So we shifted our assistance to investments to address some of the biggest challenges facing this country: creating jobs and sustainable economic growth,” she added.
Earlier Monday, thousands of Haitians lined the roadway to wave at her motorcade as it wound its way from the newly renovated airport in the seaside city of Cap-Haitien. Clinton and other U.S. officials, including Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, toured a housing development for industrial park workers supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The Clintons and their allies hope that the $300 million industrial facility will transform the northern part of this impoverished country by providing thousands of desperately needed jobs.