The United States and other nations said Haiti must lead the effort to rebuild after its devastating earthquake.

AID groups will work from an existing plan for Haiti’s development to help the country recover, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday.

Foreign ministers and aid groups leading the Haiti earthquake effort held their first conference today on how to channel aid into a country that has lost much of its already poor infrastructure.

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Haiti’s prime minister and foreign ministers from a host of nations will meet today in a bid to improve relief efforts in the quake-ravaged country.

Haiti's government said today it would move 400,000 people made homeless by the devastating earthquake from the shattered capital to new resettlement areas on the outskirts.

DRUMBEATS called the faithful to a Sunday Mass praising God amid a scene resembling the Apocalypse – a collapsed cathedral in a city cloaked with the smell of death, where aid is slow to reach survivors and rescue crews battle to pry anever-smaller number of the living from the ruins.

Drumbeats called the faithful to a Sunday Mass behind mounds of rubble and amid the few remaining walls of Port-au-Prince’s destroyed Roman Catholic cathedral to listen to a sermon in a scene resembling the Apocalypse.

Rescuers pulled a dehydrated but otherwise uninjured woman from the ruins of a luxury hotel in the Haitian capital early today, an event greeted with applause from onlookers witnessing rare good news in a city otherwise filled with corpses, rubble and desperation.

Haitian President Rene Preval today implored the international community to better co-ordinate the massive aid effort for his country and not to squabble over how to provide it.

HAITI has received billions of dollars in taxpayer and private aid from the United States and others, yet is so poor that few homes had safe drinking water, sewage disposal or electricity even before the earthquake. With sympathetic donors around the world sending money, making sure that aid is spent properly will be a challenge.

PRESIDENT Mary McAleese yesterday told Haiti’s head of state that Ireland was praying for his country as the Government prepared to send a team of specialists to the earthquake-hit region.

President Mary McAleese today told Haiti’s head of state Ireland was praying for his country after the devastating earthquake thought to have killed tens of thousands of people.