NEW YORK - The Obama administration is to pledge $1.15 billion over the next two years to help with Haiti's post-earthquake reconstruction, according to a senior U.S. official.

The official said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would announce the pledge on Wednesday at a United Nations donors conference that is expected to raise a total of about $4 billion.

This initial assistance will be used to rebuild schools, hospitals, courthouses and neighborhoods destroyed in the Jan. 12 quake, which killed up to 300,000 people. The official spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the formal announcement at the conference that Clinton is co-chairing with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

Representatives of more than 130 countries are expected to attend the meeting.

The money would provide financial support for a Haitian government recovery plan that includes decentralizing the economy to create jobs and wealth outside Port-au-Prince, the capital of some 4 million people.

Estimates of the total damage inflicted by the earthquake range between $8 billion and $14 billion.

'A new future'Former U.S. President Bill Clinton is to co-chair a committee overseeing the pledges, along with the island state's Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive.Clinton was tapped for the role earlier this week, Bellerive said. Clinton, who as U.N. special envoy to Haiti visited three times since the earthquake, will likely be spending much more time in the impoverished country in his new role.

"I was pleased to be invited by President Preval," Clinton said in an e-mailed statement. "The Haitians are committed to building back better expanding economic opportunities, strengthening basic services, and increasing the capacity of government. They want to create a new future for themselves and I am committed to assisting them through the IHRC."

The committee will include two Haitian legislators, local authorities, union and business representatives, and a delegate from the 14-nation Caribbean Community trade bloc.The board will also have a representative of each donor who is pledging at least $100 million over two years or $200 million of debt reduction currently the United States, Canada, Brazil, France, Venezuela and European Union along with the Inter-American DevelopmentBank, World Bank and United Nations.

Haiti was already the poorest country in the Western hemisphere before the magnitude 7.0 quake, with high unemployment and illiteracy among its 9 million people, almost 80 percent of whom lived on less than $2 a day.

But Bill Clinton said there was an opportunity to change that during the rebuilding process.

"The country has the best chance in my lifetime ... to build a modern self-sustaining state," former U.S. president Bill Clinton, a U.N. special envoy for Haiti, said in a speech last week.

The European Union and a coalition of U.S.-based humanitarian groups have indicated they are likely to pledge more than $2.7 billion for Haiti at the U.N. conference.

Barack Obama has asked Congress for a total of $2.8 billion in funds for Haiti relief and reconstruction costs.

Ministries destroyed
Cheryl Mills, counselor and chief of staff to the Secretary of State, said on Tuesday that the United States was planning to help Haitirebuild in the areas of agriculture, energy, health, security and justice.

The United Nations is also urging countries to support rebuilding Haiti's government capacity after all but one of the country's ministries were destroyed and almost a third of civil servants killed.

Donors and aid partners are insisting that Haiti directs the reconstruction, but monitoring mechanisms are being included in plans to finance the rebuilding effort. The World Bank is due to act as "fiscal agent" of a Multi-Donors Trust Fund to be created for Haiti.

Aid workers are urging donors not to ignore the immediate needs of more than 1 million homeless quake survivors still camped out in streets and open spaces, vulnerable to the approaching rains and hurricane season.