Bill Clinton aide confirmed as Haiti prime minister

Haiti's Senate has confirmed the nomination of Garry Conille, an advisor to former US president Bill Clinton, to be the country's prime minister.

Conille, a 45-year-old physician by training, was the third candidate put forward by President Michel Martelly for the key post, in a bid to end a three-month long impasse over the makeup of his fledgling government.

His candidacy was approved by the lower house of parliament on Friday.

Conille has been serving as chief of staff to Clinton, who as the UN special envoy for Haiti is a key player in deciding how the impoverished country will spend millions of international reconstruction dollars.

He was educated in Haiti and received graduate training in health administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Fulbright scholar.

Conille has also worked as the United Nations Development Program's (UNDP) resident representative for Niger.

Martelly, a popular former singer elected by a wide margin, was sworn in as president of Haiti on May 14 but has not yet succeeded in putting his government in place.

Martelly vowed to "change Haiti" upon taking office, promising to restore order and confidence in a country struggling to emerge from one of the most destructive earthquakes of modern times.

Much of the capital was leveled in a 7.0-magnitude quake in January 2010 that killed more than 225,000 people and left one in seven homeless in a nation that was already the poorest in the Americas.

The pace of reconstruction has been painfully slow for hundreds of thousands of traumatised survivors who lost everything and are forced to live in squalid tent cities around the still-ruined capital.