PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti–A plan to trans­form a small Caribbean is­land off the south­ern coast of Haiti in­to a high-end re­sort will cre­ate more than 2,000 jobs and help change the im­age of this im­pov­er­ished coun­try, the prime min­is­ter said.Prime Min­is­ter Lau­rent Lamothe al­so de­nied al­le­ga­tions by some res­i­dents that the gov­ern­ment will evict hun­dreds of poor farm­ers to com­plete the project.

Lamothe said that the de­vel­op­ment on Ile-a-Vache will be the most am­bi­tious tourism project ever in Haiti and that crit­ics who have clashed with po­lice in protests do not ful­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the ben­e­fits."This will bring the hope for a bet­ter fu­ture for all the res­i­dents of Ile-a-Vache," Lamothe said by phone while in Chile. "We def­i­nite­ly have no plans to evict any­one."

The US$260 mil­lion project be­ing built with a com­bi­na­tion of for­eign aid and pri­vate in­vest­ment is sched­uled to be com­plet­ed in two years. It in­cludes con­dos, spas, a com­mu­ni­ty ra­dio sta­tion and an in­ter­na­tion­al air­port that will al­low for­eign­ers to by­pass chaot­ic Port-au-Prince.Lamothe said there will be more than 2,000 jobs in ho­tels, plus work build­ing schools and a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre.

Work has be­gun on the air­port, a US$24 mil­lion gift from Venezuela's gov­ern­ment, amid a se­ries of protests that be­gan last year af­ter the gov­ern­ment an­nounced it was seiz­ing land for the project on the is­land of 15,000 peo­ple, many of them farm­ers and fish­er­men. (AP)