"Ordinary and regular immigration laws will apply going forward, which means we are not going to be accepting into the US Haitians who are attempting to make it to our shores," Clinton told reporters.

"They will be interdicted, they will be repatriated," the chief US diplomat said when asked what could be done to prevent Haitians from fleeing the country in the first place.

The US authorities said Wednesday that they have not observed any massive influx of Haitian boat people since the devastating earthquake hit Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas on January 12.

Clinton recalled that Washington, for humanitarian reasons, has granted temporary asylum to Haitians who were in the country without proper legal documents at the time of the quake.

Clinton also stressed US determination to help Haitians fleeing their capital for relatively safer areas in the countryside.

"We also know that so many people are leaving Port-au-Prince into the surrounding countryside. We're trying to get more aid out there, more shelter, food, medicine, certainly water," she said.

"People feel safer in the countryside and we want to support them," she said.

earlier related report
The injured Haitian kids at center of adoption debate
Port-Au-Prince (AFP) Jan 21, 2010 - Five-year-old Mana Morin Perretto's foot is smashed, a third of her playmates are dead and the orphanage where she lived lies in ruins, but she may be luckier than other Haitian kids.

Mana survived last week's devastating earthquake, which killed 57 of the 132 youngsters at her Port-au-Prince children's home, and was this week due to fly out to start a new life with her adoptive family in southwest France.

Many governments have rushed to speed up adoption procedures in order to get Haitian orphans to safety after the catastrophic quake, sparking warnings of a dangerous free-for-all from child protection charities.

Agencies like Save the Children and World Vision fear that in the rush to save kids like little Mana from tragedy, fast-track adoptions could break up families for ever and leave children growing up rootless and depressed.

"We wouldn't stop any child from being saved," said UNICEF child protection volunteer Mayi Garneadia-Pierre at Mana's orphanage, warning against a rush to post-quake adoptions that could break remaining family ties.

"But when a child grows to 15-years-old he has an enormous need of signposts of his identity. It's not abuse in the sense of mistreatment, but it's abusive in the sense of making a permanent break. You need to keep links."

Some Western governments and prospective adoptive families argue that the humanitarian disaster is such that any kids with a hope of starting anew in a country with better prospects and medical care should be given that chance.

It's a serious debate for serious people, and at the center of it are little girls like Mana, whose story illustrates the dilemmas and contradictions that make this emotive issue so difficult to resolve.

On Thursday morning she was sleeping on a camp bed in a field hospital set up by French civil defense officers in the leafy grounds of Port-au-Prince's French high school, in the once plush suburb of Petionville.

Her head lay in the lap of 24-year-old carer Fabiola Brutus, who gently caressed her scars. Recent stitches lined a forehead wound and a wicked gash down through the little braids on the back of her tiny skull.

She is small for her five years and her feet are bound in gauze, both are fractured and one is all but crushed. Doctors say she will be marked for life and might never walk normally again.

She stretched and woke, unsmiling and silent. She has been told about the collapse of her orphanage, but she hasn't talked about it. She didn't say a word nor emit more than a whimper during an AFP reporter's visit.

At first she stares ahead impassively as visitors fuss around her.

But when the doctors do their rounds and she finds herself surrounded by a large crowd of journalists and medics her face twists into an image of grief and pain as she struggles to cry. No tears nor sound will come.

She is gathered up in a photographer's arms and clings on tight. Later, she agrees to take water from a feeding bottle held gently by a French medic, but refuses food and instead feeds her biscuit to the journalist.

Mana's adoption was under way before the earthquake broke, and France is one of several countries that have agreed to speed procedures. She didn't know it yet, but she was due to leave later that day on a flight to Guadeloupe.

Her playground comrades back at the Orphanage of Our Lady of the Nativity, in Port-au-Prince's western suburbs, don't yet have that chance.

One of them, fellow five-year-old Reubens Charles, had been accepted by a family in Angers, central France, but was among the 57 children crushed when the three-storey concrete building collapsed, its owner said.

Here, the story of Mana and Reubens' life becomes more complicated.

Eveline Louis-Jacques has run the Our Lady "orphanage" for eight years but, in reality, virtually none of the children there has lost their parents. Poor families pay a fee for their kids to be paid for.

"I'd call them economic orphans. All of them are going to be adopted in France," she told AFP, as the 74 survivors -- including four babes-in-arms under six months -- played in a grove of mango trees and coconut palms.

They had received a first delivery of clean water, which they sipped and shared in giant polysterene mugs almost as big as their heads, and UNICEF was planning to drop off food, emergency supplies and more water later in the day.

Now the world community will have to decide what happens next.

earlier related report
Haiti quake victims find solidarity in chaos
Port-Au-Prince (AFP) Jan 21, 2010 - Her husband and two of her children died in Haiti's earthquake but Mariane Dorleis is not alone. Neighbors are sharing their food and local men have formed armed gangs for protection.

Solidarity is growing out of misery in Carrefour, a chaotic seaside shantytown of Port-au-Prince that has received none of the international aid that has begun to reach other parts of the capital.

Out at sea, a giant US aircraft carrier and hospital ship are anchored, while US military helicopters regularly thunder overhead -- cruel reminders of this shattered community's lack of help from the outside world.

"I live day to day," said Dorleis, 42.

She was cleaning laundry when the earthquake struck, while her husband, a fisherman, and two of her children slept inside their house.

Neighbors helped her drag the three bodies from the rubble, to bury them in the verge between two roads, to build a cabin out of cloth and logs.

She used to sell the fish her husband caught and now has no means of survival -- so neighbors are also helping feed her and her two surviving young ones.

"There is a gentleman who helps me. My neighbors can't help me all the time, but I would not know what to do to survive. This morning, I had nothing to give to the children," she said.

The man helping her has five of his own offspring to support. His house was flattened in the quake, his fishing boat shattered, leaving him no more than his net, which Dorleis was repairing in exchange.

"I make every effort possible, but we don't have much. We haven't received any aid and I have a big family to feed," said Jean-Michel Nazaire, 45.

He wanted to search for aid and work but feared venturing out into the street, where there is only looting, chaos and the lingering stench of death.

Antoine Nadal, a 52-year-old chauffeur, was one of the few who left the shantytown since the massive 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck nine days ago, claiming at least 75,000 lives, leaving over half a million homeless and flattening a large swath of the country.

"If there had been any aid in Carrefour then I would have found it, I can tell you -- I need it," he said

He went to the airport to offer his services as a driver, but everything was in turmoil there too and he came back empty-handed.

"We live, we share," said Nadal.

Neighbors clubbed together to share rice, maize and oil, and traveled to a nearby source for water. But today, nothing was left to eat.

"Since this morning, I haven't been able to feed my children. They are just six, ten and 11 years old," added Nadal.

Like others in the ruined neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince, local men have formed groups to fight off looters.

"Since the start, they have come to steal the only things we were able to save from the rubble -- sheets, curtains, even doors. We chased them off with stones and sticks," said Nazaire.

At nightfall the men regrouped, lit fires and kept watch.

Arriving a little later, 50-year-old Christer Desulmain asked for help to dig out the rotting bodies of victims emanating an unbearable smell.

"We try to get organized, we try to form communities, but they also need to send us help from outside," he said.

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