PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Former President Bill Clinton will be named special U.N. envoy to this impoverished Caribbean nation that has been mired in political and social turmoil for decades, his spokesman said Monday.

An official announcement is expected from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on Tuesday, Clinton spokesman Matt McKenna told The Associated Press.

Clinton is popular among many of Haiti's poor because as president in 1994, he used the threat of military force to oust a dictatorship in the Caribbean nation.

U.S. Army troops and Marines then quickly arrived to pave the way for the return of elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been ousted in a coup.

In March, the former U.S. president toured the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince with the U.N. chief to encourage investment after a year that saw a food crisis, destabilizing riots and four devastating tropical storms.

"I've been following this country for more than three decades," Clinton said during a March 2009 interview with the Miami Herald, The Cable reported Monday.

"I think I understand what its shortcomings have been but I've always believed most of its problems were not as some people suggested; cultural, mystical. I think they were subject to misgovernment," he said.

Clinton also attended an April donors conference in Washington that resulted in pledges of $324 million for Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation.

Because of his marriage to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, State Department lawyers must approve and review some of Clinton's international activities under an agreement between the U.S. Senate and Clinton Foundation.

Officials said the State Department is aware of the appointment but could not immediately say if its lawyers have signed off on it.

U.N. officials did not immediately comment on the announcement.

Click here to read the full report from The Cable.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.