WASHINGTON - About $50 million will begin flowing to Haiti next week to help fund healthcare needs and educational programs, a U.S. Treasury official said Tuesday.

The money is part of a $146 million Inter-American Development Bank loan package that had been frozen after disputed legislative elections in May 2000.

As much as $34 million will be made available immediately, John Taylor, Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Additional funds will follow to pay for roads, water and sanitation services.

''With substantially better policy performance and financial accountability, Haiti could tap into other development assistance as well,'' Taylor said.

The Haitian government paved the way for the cash flow last week by using foreign reserves to pay $32 million in arrears to the development bank. Taylor said the payment was ''a crucial step forward,'' but said Haiti still has a long way to go in establishing political and economic stability, as well as curtailing widespread corruption.

The most pressing issue is the creation of an electoral commission to supervise national elections intended to bring an end to the political deadlock between President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his opponents, collectively known as Democratic Convergence.

That dispute has prompted several international lending institutions to suspend millions of dollars in grants managed through the government.

At an Organization of American States meeting in Chile last month, Secretary of State Colin Powell pledged $1 million for training Haiti's national police force to ensure a peaceful environment for the national election and to weed out corruption within the department, allegedly enticed by a thriving drug-trafficking trade in the Caribbean nation.

Marc Grossman, undersecretary of state for political affairs, told senators that an estimated 9 percent of cocaine headed to the United States flows through Haiti.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., meanwhile, bombarded officials with questions about perceived disparate treatment toward Haitians seeking to immigrate.

Grossman cited three ''spikes'' in migration -- in 1991, 1992 and 1994 -- as reasons for the Bush administration's policy of interdiction and repatriation of those who do not qualify for asylum. Holding Haitians in detention while they seek asylum, rather than releasing them to family members, also is intended to send a message.

''The reason for that, senator, is to keep people in Haiti,'' Grossman said, adding that ''expectations and perceptions'' have been the spark behind the three migration spikes.