WASHINGTON -- When Haiti was gripped by crisis in 1994, President Bill Clinton sent troops to restore its exiled president to power, organized a $2.6 billion international rescue program and declared the island a top priority of his administration.

Yet by the end of his term, the Clinton administration's interest in Haiti had waned and its patience had worn out. Clinton ordered a halt to most direct U.S. aid, a step some experts say inflicted lasting damage on the hemisphere's poorest country.

Now, Clinton has teamed up with former President George W. Bush on a fundraising program they say is aimed both at helping Haiti recover from the Jan. 12 earthquake and finally putting the battered country on a path to prosperity.

The effort also could help make up for the failings of policies over 16 years, which have been fitful and, even by sympathetic assessments, netted only modest progress.

For Clinton, Haiti was always a special case. He had been fascinated by the country since his first visit, 35 years ago, when he learned about voodoo and witnessed a ceremony in which a Haitian woman bit off the head of a live chicken.

As president, Clinton restored Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president with the intervention of 20,000 U.S. troops in 1994. But Aristide resisted U.S. pressure to make Haiti more democratic and to reform its withering economy. U.S. hopes of finally building strong democratic institutions, including an independent judiciary and police, went nowhere.

Bush, who has been largely out of the public eye since he left office, also might be hoping the Haiti project will help overcome criticism he got for his administration's response after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The Bush administration took office a year after fraud-tainted parliamentary elections in Haiti in 2000. This event prompted the United States and some allied donors to freeze most official aid to the country. Bush continued the aid restrictions.

By 2004, Haiti was in a fragile state, rebellion broke out, and Aristide was forced from power. The Bush administration sent U.S. Marines to Haiti in February 2004 as Aristide fled the country, a move some Democrats complained made the United States complicit in a coup.

But Bush, who had criticized the Clinton administration for using the military for "nation-building," withdrew the U.S. troops within three months, handing the security mission to the United Nations.