US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due to visit Haiti in a show of support for the country's presidential election scheduled on November 20. She will meet members of the interim government that has been running Haiti since former President Jean Bertrand Aristide was forced into exile in 2004. During her one-day visit, Miss Rice will also meet UN peacekeepers. Politically-motivated violence has continued in Haiti despite the presence of more than 7,000 UN peacekeepers. The violence has also been linked to poverty with more than 50% of Haiti's population surviving on less than $1 a day, the BBC's State Department correspondent Jonathan Beale says. "She wants to go down there and see what progress they (Haitians) have made and urge them to make continued progress," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. Miss Rice wants to deliver a message of hope to Haiti but there has been precious little of it in this former French colony, BBC correspondent says.
