PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – Former U.S. President  Bill Clinton’s role as U.N. special envoy to Haiti will help  raise world awareness of its plight as the poorest state in the  Americas, Haiti’s prime minister said yesterday.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this week named Clinton,  who has sought international support for Haiti’s  reconstruction, to be his special envoy to the Caribbean state,  which was battered by riots and hurricanes last year.

Praising Clinton as a “great friend of Haiti,” Haitian  Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis told Reuters he was  instrumental in helping her government win $324 million in new  aid commitments at an April donors’ conference in Washington.

“We will work with him to better make the case of Haiti to  the international community and to build a new, solid and  efficient partnership to improve the Haitian people’s living  conditions,” Pierre-Louis said.

Haiti’s people are the poorest in the Americas and the tiny  state’s fragile economy was pummeled by a series of major  hurricanes last year that caused mudslides and flooding,  killing about 800 people. This came hard on the heels of a  global food crisis that had pushed up staple food prices.