That grim assessment came as international efforts coalesced towards a joint strategy to rebuild Haiti, with a series of meetings being planned from March 15 culminating with a March 30 conference in New York.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), overseeing aid efforts on the ground, says the emergency phase of relief operations is over, with food, water, health and makeshift shelters having been distributed.

But those advances are now threatened by the Caribbean rainy season, which is looming in the form of dark clouds and occasional downpours, one of which caused flooding that killed 13 people last weekend.

By the end of April, daily prolonged storms will turn Haiti's roads into fast-flowing rivers, trigger mudslides and contaminate clean water sources with sewage and the remains of the thousands of unrecovered corpses decomposing in the rubble of buildings.

Mounting concerns have forced aid groups and the crippled Haitian government to change tack and advocate the voluntary resettlement of hundreds of thousands of people from the crowded tent camps, most of which sit on low-lying fields that will turn into expanses of mud.

Kristen Knutson, spokeswoman for the UN's OCHA, said moves were being made to clear rubble and set up sanitation facilities in five locations outside the capital for the new settlements.

"This is just one of a multitude of solutions for people to consider," Knutson said, explaining that residents who were able to return to their shattered neighborhoods were also being encouraged to do so.

At the same time, the Red Cross was spearheading plans to provide more durable cover to the homeless.

Next week, it will start bringing in wood-and-plastic-sheeting dwellings called Emergency Core Sheltersfrom the neighboring Dominican Republic, Red Cross spokesman Alex Wynter said, likening them to "small houses."

But he cautioned that only 3,000 are expected to be available by the end of May -- when the storms hitting Haiti are expected worsen as the hurricane season begins -- which means "they are not a solution to the rainy season."

"We can't put all the people in them in six weeks," he said.

Malaria, which spikes each rainy season in Haiti because of mosquito breeding, is likely to prove one of the biggest challenges.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a report Thursday that the deadliest form of malaria posed a "substantial risk" for residents and relief workers alike in Haiti.

It noted that 11 people who had gone to the United States after spending time in Haiti following the January 12 earthquake had already been diagnosed with malaria.

Seven were US emergency responders, including six members of the US military; three were Haitian residents who travelled to the United States, including one adoptee; and one was a "US traveller."

Haiti reports 30,000 confirmed cases of malaria each year to the Pan American Health Organization, but the real incidence of the mosquito-borne illness is probably as high as 200,000 cases, the CDC report said.

Against the backdrop of those worries, governments and organizations are trying to come up with a joint, coordinated international strategy to get Haiti's economy and society functioning again.

The core nations involved are Brazil, Canada, France, Spain and the United States, in conjunction with the European Union, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations and the Inter-American Development Bank.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, speaking to reporters in Paris on Thursday, said he hoped the plan would be forged with Haitian government input in time for a big international conference in New York on March 31.

But, he admitted, "all that is not easy."

A small meeting to prepare for the New York gathering will be held March 12 in the Dominican Republic, a French government official involved in Haiti's reconstruction, Pierre Duquesne, said.

On March 15, a business meeting will take place in Haiti under the aegis of the Inter-American Development Bank.

That will be followed the next day by a meeting of the core countries and organizations in another location, then on March 17 by a larger grouping of 40 to 50 countries.

On March 22, in Washington, the Haitian diaspora will hold talks.

On March 23, two other, separate meetings will be held, one in the French Caribbean island of Martinique and the other in Brussels.

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