Haiti’s President went to the White House yesterday with a vision of a Caribbean paradise waiting to be rebuilt after January’s catastrophic earthquake — and a price tag that could rise to $14 billion (£9 billion).

President Préval and his Prime Minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, are in Washington with a sales pitch on which their country depends — but which depends, in turn, on persuading recession-hit donors that the corruption that has bedevilled Haiti for generations can at last be overcome.

In a document that the Haitian delegation calls simply “the plan”, the slums and rubble of Port-au-Prince make way for a model city of cycle paths, beachfront boardwalks and ecofriendly housing. The economy roars back to life, thanks to tourism and cash crops such as coffee, mangoes and freshly cut flowers, and a hugely ambitious social engineering project permanently relocates at least half a million refugees to suburbs outside the devastated capital as the beginning of a new Haitian middle class.

Mr Bellerive has spoken of the plan as a road map to the “Haiti we are all dreaming of”.

It is a far cry from the reality that he has briefly left behind, where 1.2 million Haitians remain homeless. As the rains approach, barely a quarter of them have received tents or plastic sheeting, and estimates of the earthquake’s death toll have stabilised at about 220,000.

President Obama appeared more concerned than his visitor with this reality yesterday. “The situation on the ground remains dire,” he told an audience in the White House Rose Garden. “People should be under no illusion that the crisis is over.”

While Mr Obama said that there was still a desperate need for food, shelter and medicines, Mr Préval has urged donors in recent days to stop sending food aid and to focus on “agricultural aid” — the seeds, fertilisers and basic farm tools without which rural Haiti will not be able to capitalise on the rainy season and feed itself.

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www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7057386.ece