Washington.– Haiti's president-elect Michel Martelly won fulsome praise Wednesday from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on a visit to the United States in which he criticized the "desperately slow" reconstruction of his quake-hit nation.

"My new vision for my country is to begin all the useful and necessary reforms," he pledged at a joint press conference after lunching with Clinton at the State Department.

Clinton congratulated Martelly and gave her full backing to the 50-year-old political novice as he looks to turn the desperate situation in his Caribbean homeland around.

"I am very encouraged by the campaign that Mr. Martelly ran, his emphasis on the people and their needs, his willingness to be very clear in what he hoped to achieve on their behalf, and now he has a chance to lead," she said.

Martelly has vowed his first six months as president will focus on moving hundreds of thousands of quake survivors out of squalid tent cities, tackling a resilient cholera epidemic, and boosting agricultural production.

He also met in Washington on Tuesday with the heads of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.