The unlikely duo are to meet Haitian President Rene Preval and see first-hand the wretched situation in some of the camps where hundreds of thousands of survivors are at risk from the coming rains and hurricane season.

The pair head the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, a relief organization set up after the January 12 quake that leveled parts of the capital Port-au-Prince, killing at least 220,000 people and leaving 1.3 million homeless.

They were tapped by President Barack Obama to lead a bipartisan fundraising campaign and oversee long-term reconstruction and relief efforts in the country, the poorest nation in the Americas.

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said he expected "more commitments" from them during the day-long visit, which comes ahead of a crucial donors summit in New York on March 31.

"I am sure that the joint effect of the two ex-presidents will be something that is going to benefit the Haitian population," Bellerive said.

Almost 10 weeks after the 7.0-magnitude quake, the government and international aid groups are racing against time to relocate more than 200,000 people in high-risk camps.

Many lie on steep slopes that could be washed away when the rains come, but despite the squalor and insecurity the camp dwellers don't want to move to new sites away from the capital, which will not be ready for weeks yet anyway.

The New York meeting is expected to commit 11.5 billion dollars for an epic reconstruction effort following the unprecedented disaster, which caused an estimated 7.9 billion dollars of damage, equivalent to 120 percent of Haiti's GDP.

Progress so far is slow and there is growing concern for the most vulnerable -- women, children and the elderly -- as they are forced to subsist in appalling conditions with no end in sight to their plight.

Local experts and academics produced a stark assessment Sunday of the impact of the 7.0 magnitude quake on higher education in Haiti and issued an impassioned plea for funding.

"Eighty-seven percent of Haiti's higher education institutions were impaired or completely demolished," the report said.

"Investment in higher education, in this immediate aftermath of the disaster, will be critical to the long-term development and rebuilding of Haiti's future."

The list of worthy causes is endless here and a large part of the challenge in New York will be prioritizing which sectors get what split of the money and how that cash is accounted for.

Haiti's recent history is one of extreme political turmoil and donor nations will seek reassurances that the Preval government and whoever succeeds him next year won't squander or embezzle aid money as has happened in the past.

Assistant UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction Margareta Wahlstroem told AFP that one of the keys to success would be decentralizing the recovery effort.

"It's clear that local government has not really been consulted properly, that this has been a very centrally driven process," she said during a tour of Jacmel, an important cultural and tourist town decimated by the earthquake.

"Unless you are determined to get the resources to this level, recovery is going to be very slow."

Clinton, the long-time UN envoy to Haiti who honeymooned in the Caribbean nation in 1975 with his wife, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has already visited twice since the quake.

Monday is the first ever visit by Bush, whose administration was criticized for not bolstering Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the first democratically elected president, who was flown into exile during a 2004 rebellion.

Supporters of Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas party, which has been excluded from elections due later this year, said they planned to hold a protest during the presidents' visit.

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