CRISIS IN THE CARIBBEAN : U.S., Allies Ready to Pay for Peace : Aid: Plan seeks to stimulate growth, foster democracy. Tab is likely to be $550 million in first year alone.

No matter how or when Haiti’s military leaders leave power, U.S. officials promise one sure thing about the reconstruction effort that will follow: It will cost real money.

The United States and its allies have already promised to shoulder much of the burden of rebuilding Haiti’s ravaged economy, a task that will cost an estimated $550 million in the first year alone and stretch well into the 21st Century.

The first U.S. aid workers will land in Haiti with military troops, tackling immediate problems of getting food, water and electricity flowing. The Clinton Administration has made plans to feed as many as 2 million of Haiti’s 6.6 million people for a year or more.

Once emergency aid is flowing, U.S. officials plan to launch an ambitious reconstruction plan to lift Haiti from its poverty. But the economic aid program has an explicit political aim as well: to help democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide break the power of the country’s monied oligarchy by building a new capitalist class.

The money won’t all be American; more than half will come from other wealthy countries. The United States has already pledged at least $100 million in direct aid in the first year, with more to come.

“The aim is to lift Haiti out of its position as the poorest country of the region, and that is a long-haul proposition,” said Mark L. Schneider, assistant administrator of the Agency for International Development, the U.S. foreign aid agency.

“This is an economy that has suffered three years of devastation,” he said.

Even before the September, 1991, military coup that overthrew Aristide and led to a series of increasingly punishing international trade sanctions, most Haitians survived on an annual income of less than $100 per person. Even then, the country had to import food, its farm production held back by poor soil and backward technology.

During the past year, both industry and agriculture have virtually collapsed. Even under the embargo, the United States has been providing food relief for about 1 million Haitians.

The aim of the international aid program designed by AID, other donors and Aristide advisers, however, is not merely to feed Haiti’s impoverished masses. Instead, U.S. officials say, they hope to help transform Haiti’s economic and political structure so democracy can take root in the island nation for the first time in its history.

“You’re going to wipe away a corrupt political system of overlords from the top down that has robbed and stolen what the society has been able to produce,” Schneider said.

“The key part of this is reawakening and stimulating the private sector--but not the same private sector that has dominated the country until now,” he said.

To address that problem, he said, the United States and other donors have agreed to support a plan proposed by Aristide to break up Haiti’s state-protected monopolies in such sectors as sugar and cement, and turn those enterprises over to their employees and other small investors.

The program will also include loans and other support for small businesses and farmers, he said.

Schneider and other officials said a major aid program will be needed for at least five to seven years, and probably beyond that, with the total bill impossible to estimate.

Of the $550 million needed for the first year, the United States has promised $100 million and other countries and international organizations have promised $350 million, for a total of $450 million already pledged. The United States has offered to help make up the remaining $100 million if others join in.

Last month, as a key part of the planning, the United States and other donors met in Paris with Aristide advisers and agreed on the basic terms of an economic recovery plan. The plan, formally proposed by Aristide, would cost $770 million over two years.

The donors agreed to a U.S. proposal to quickly write off $81 million in overdue foreign debts owed by the Haitian government, enabling international lending institutions to extend about $150 million in credit for new projects.

The plan would begin with an immediate shot in the arm to Haiti’s economy, about $95 million for food, health services and the creation of about 50,000 jobs.

Some of those jobs, largely in road-building and other infrastructure repair projects, would be available to former soldiers drummed out of Haiti’s armed forces, Schneider said. But the number of former soldiers is likely to be 5,000 or fewer, so they would receive only a small fraction of the public works jobs, he added.

An additional $85 million would be available for political reforms, including training a new police force, setting up a new judicial system, establishing better protection of human rights and holding parliamentary elections at the end of this year.

If all this sounds like nation-building--a mission Clinton and his aides have forsworn--Schneider said it should not turn out that way.

“The Haitians have to do most of the work themselves,” he said. Besides, he added, “the international community is fully involved,” meaning Haiti won’t just be a U.S. responsibility.

The biggest danger, he said, is that Americans and others may hope for too much progress too soon in a country that has long been an economic basket case.

“We have to be sure that our expectations are based on what Haiti has been in the past,” he said. “The change is going to be gradual.”