BLITZER: Let's get right to the former President of the United States Bill Clinton. He is the United Nations special representative for Haiti.

I know this is a subject, this is a country, the Haitian people very close to your heart, Mr. President. Give us the latest information, what you are hearing from the United Nations, from the U.S. government, your other sources in Haiti about how devastating this situation is.

BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, first of all, Wolf, it appears that an enormous percentage, maybe as many as a third of the country, have been adversely affected by it.

We don't know how many people are dead yet. We did -- at last count, we had pulled 10 survivors out of our United Nations headquarters, which, as you know, was in a five-story hotel that completely collapsed. We know there are fatalities. We don't know how many. And that is the same for the people throughout the island.

We still have lots and lots of people with missing family members. And we just have to keep hoping that we will have more rescue teams down there. The United States sent more today. China sent one. Russia is sending a big helicopter or two tomorrow. People from all over the world are trying to help, but it is a devastating problem.

Last night, the streets of Port-au-Prince were littered with wounded people sleeping and the bodies of those who had perished. And we are going to have, I think, another three or four really hard days of just clearing through the rubble to find the living and those who have died.

BLITZER: These numbers we are hearing are devastating, Mr. President, the prime minister of Haiti suggesting more than 100,000 people may have been killed in this earthquake, the ambassador of Haiti to the United States saying to me just a little while ago the same thing.

Are these numbers really realistic, because they seem so high?

CLINTON: They do seem high. If you think about the population of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding area, in excess of two million, 100,000 would be about 5 percent.

What I am hoping is that, when they clear the rubble away, they will find that more people have survived these collapsing buildings than they think. We just don't know. But one of the things that we are worried about is that some people will die from exposure, from dehydration, from their injuries who could be saved, which is why getting these search-and-rescue teams in there is so important and why, for all the good intentions that people have, I think it is very important to realize that we are going through about a week here, maybe even 10 days to two weeks, where the critical needs are very simple, food, water, shelter, first aid supplies. And, for that, the most important thing you can do is not to send those supplies, but to send cash, either to the Red Cross and Red Crescent. We have set up -- my special envoy office has set up a Web site, clintonfoundation.org/haitiearthquake, that we will just -- anybody that sends us money, we are just going to move it into those supplies quickly.

Meanwhile, we have a U.N. office that has been devastated, but we are reconstituting it. Mr. Annabi's predecessor is going back down there. And we're going to try to maximum our effectiveness.

The United States has been great, the president, secretary of state, the Defense Department, USAID. We're going to try to get all this organized as quickly as we can and move. But everybody needs to understand this was a devastating thing. We don't even have good cell phone coverage with everyone down there now. We are doing our best to get the communications and the logistics set up.

But I think you will see an awful lot of progress in just a couple of days. But I just -- I am grateful for everyone who wants to help, but right now we have to save as many lives as possible, and that means, more than anything else, we need water, food, first aid supplies, and shelter.

We think we have found the shelter, and we have just got to equip it now.

BLITZER: When I spoke, Mr. President, with Raymond Joseph, the Haitian ambassador to the United States, his great fear was, even if you could get these big planes to land at the airport in Port-au- Prince, the roads may not be driveable, may not be usable. You could not get trucks to deliver these badly needed supplies or search-and- rescue equipment out there to remove the rubble.

How worried are you about this?

CLINTON: Very. That is why we need more helicopters.

MINUSTAH, the U.N. mission there, only had seven helicopters. I think the United States supplied some more today. I understand the Russians are sending in two big transport helicopters. But we can use these helicopters where the roads are impassable.

And the other thing I would say is, the Haitian government did buy some very good dirt-moving equipment with a grant they got from Venezuela. We just need to make sure it is in the Port-au-Prince area. Then, the Dominican Republic is doing a lot of construction work. They have some equipment that can be moved over there.

The C-130 transport planes can bring earth- and debris-moving equipment from further away. It's going to take a day or two, but we can do it. And, meanwhile, you have got people digging by hand through this rubble desperately trying to find folks still alive.

And that is why I said what we need now, unless you can provide search-and-rescue or you have a medical team, we just need these basic supplies, because we have got a terrible water shortage, a food shortage that the U.N. can ameliorate to some extent, and we need more first aid supplies, even where we have medical facilities at the airport.

And my deputy, Dr. Paul Farmer, who has a huge operation in Haiti -- he has two doctors there -- in a lot of places, they don't even have aspirin. We have got to get these supplies in there.

BLITZER: What lessons do you think the international community learned from the tsunami in Indonesia and Thailand, from Katrina along the Gulf Coast that should be used right now in dealing with this aftermath of this earthquake in Haiti?

CLINTON: Well, I think that what we learned was -- for example, let me give you an example in the tsunami, where I worked hard for two years.

We had a wonderful diaspora group from Sri Lanka that immediately wanted to send supplies, because they knew people had lost everything in the tsunami. But they sent the supplies before we had the infrastructure, the logistics built up to distribute them. And a lot of those supplies were just lost on the tarmac at the Colombo airport in the tsunami.

When the earthquake hit here -- I mean -- excuse me -- the four hurricanes hit here in 2008, there was a general sense that, while everybody was very forthcoming with help, we had not coordinated the work of the people on the ground in Haiti with the American military well enough, and we hadn't focused enough on the basics, on water and food and first aid supplies and shelter.

So, that is why I have been insistent tonight. We need to do the first things first, get through the first two weeks, then do what is necessary to help people recover and to sustain themselves while they are recovering. And there has to be very close coordination between the United States military and any other military assets we have and this U.N. force on the ground under the command of the Brazilians.

These people have done a great job here. And so far I have been really impressed that the work that the American military has done with the MINUSTAH forces. So, I think we are absorbing the lessons we learned in the tsunami and Katrina and in dealing with the hurricane season in Haiti two years ago.

BLITZER: Mr. President, people all over the world are watching right now. We are being seen on CNN and CNN International in more than 240 countries. Speak first to leaders around the world what you want them to do to help and then speak from your heart to individuals who are simply shaken by what is going on in Haiti right now.

CLINTON: Well, first, to the leaders, I would say, if you have already made a commitment in one of our donors conferences, you need to check and see whether you have fulfilled that commitment. Most countries are way behind on fulfilling it. And I would urge you to fulfill the commitment as soon as possible. And if you can provide any of this emergency help, if you can give us helicopters, if you can give us basic medical supplies, we need that. But, remember, this is going to be a long-term process. Haiti has an economic development plan that the government and the people have embraced.

The rest of us are just helping them to implement it. And I would urge you not to give up on Haiti as a lost cause, because we can get through this. And it is even more important now that we honor the wishes of the Haitian people and the government to help become their partners and liberate them from 200 years of misery. They can still do it.

But first things first. We have got to care for the survivors, identify those who have died, reunite them with their families and deal with these basic problems.

To individuals, I would tell you that these are good people. Yes, Haiti is the poorest country in our hemisphere. Yes, 70 percent of the people or more live on $2 a day or less. Yes, they have had a long and tortured history.

But they are good people. They are survivors. They are intelligent. They thrive in their diaspora communities. They desperately want to reclaim their country and give it a better future. And they need your help now.

A lot of us at the U.N., we believe in them. And a lot of us today are pretty low, because we know that some of our colleagues have died because they believed in Haiti. These people deserve a chance to bury their dead, to heal their wounded, to eat, to sleep, to begin to recover, and they can't do it just with government help alone.

They need you, too. If you can give $1, $5, $10, you can send it to clintonfoundation.org/haitiearthquake, or you can send it to UNICEF or the CARE or the Red Cross/Red Crescent. We will get that money out. And little donations add up to big amounts.

In the Asian tsunami, 250,000 people died, Americans gave $1 billion. The median contribution was $56. Half the people gave it over the Internet, and that was five years ago -- $5 or $10 can make a huge difference.

These people are just like you, and they are hurting now. There are people who are missing their spouses, their children, their brothers, their sisters, their parents. We are going to save as many of them as we can. And with your help, we are going to help them begin again.

BLITZER: Well said, Mr. President. Thanks so much. I know Haiti is very close to you, not just in recent years. I traveled with you to Haiti back in the '90s, when you were president of the United States.

CLINTON: Yes. BLITZER: And I remember that trip, and I remember seeing you up close during that stay in Haiti. And I know, all these years later, Haiti is very, very special to you.

CLINTON: Well, you remember, Wolf, Hillary and I went to Haiti on a delayed honeymoon trip in December of 1975.

And she has been so upset about this, that she's doing everything she can do at State, with AID. We have loved that place for a long time. And we -- we think the people have gotten a raw deal time and time again, and they keep coming back. And they will come back again, if people will see them as their fellow human beings.

They are hurting, but they are good people, and they need our help.

BLITZER: Mr. President, thanks very much for what you are doing. Thanks very much for joining us.

CLINTON: Thank you.