Other nations offer U.S. aid

Despite upbeat tone of Bush administration, foreign countries step in to assist with money and some muscle

BY ANDREW METZ | STAFF WRITER

September 11, 2005

Four days into the largest natural disaster in U.S. history, President George W. Bush assured Americans that "this country is going to rise up and take care of it."

"I'm not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn't asked for it," he said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "We'd love help, but we're going to take care of our own business as well and there's no doubt in my mind we'll succeed."

But nearly two weeks after Hurricane Katrina turned the Gulf Coast into a disaster zone unrecognizable as modern America, and amid criticism of the U.S. government's response, there are signs that for all the can-do attitude, there's plenty of room for help from abroad.

In scenes few could have envisioned, a Mexican army convoy carrying water and supplies crossed into the country on Thursday; and Friday NATO agreed to send cargo ships and jetliners to the region - the alliance's first such deployment. The United Nations, too, has been asked to help coordinate distribution of money and material from foreign countries, after some nations complained the administration was slow to take up the offers.

"We, as internationals, deal with mass natural disasters around the globe a number of times a year, so we have well-tested systems which have now been appreciated by many of these U.S. agencies," Jan Egeland, UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told reporters late last week.

Seasoned international relief organizations have also stepped into the crisis and tried to impart the expertise they've developed responding to wars and natural disasters. Several aid agencies are working with local groups and some are offering to take on the resettlement of up to 100,000 evacuees.

Many of the groups, however, are struggling to break into a response apparatus unaccustomed to such large-scale need and destruction. Relief workers said they are still encountering a dangerous lack of leadership and coordination - fundamentals of response proven in places like Rwanda, Afghanistan, Iran and Indonesia.

"What we found the hard way is that you need to prevent redundancy, which means you do not want 10 people delivering water in one town and no one delivering up the road," said Nathaniel Raymond, an OXFAM humanitarian response adviser.

Raymond said the moment his team arrived in the Biloxi area last week, they recognized basic coordination was failing. A week later, he said, he's still not "sure what structures are in place or will be in place to make sure it happens."

Mark Bartolini, a humanitarian aid worker overseeing the International Rescue Committee's efforts in Baton Rouge, said that "in any crisis, the first few weeks are always extremely chaotic." But, he said the hurricane response is in jeopardy of failing many people if communications in particular are not dramatically improved.

"What is happening now is that people are showing up that can help, but are being turned away because there is no way to plug them into the system," he said. "Even 10 days into the tsunami, the structures were starting to take place."

Indeed, though about 100 countries have offered aid, both substantial and symbolic, ($25,000 came from impoverished Sri Lanka), the impression that the world's superpower failed has circulated abroad. China's main communist party newspaper called the response "a shame on the United States."

Administration officials have defended their ongoing efforts and on Friday, the president's longtime adviser, Karen Hughes, was sworn in as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy - an image ambassador.

"On the one hand, the U.S. government welcomes the good will of the international community in helping out," said Charles Kupchan, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former National Security Council official under President Bill Clinton.

"But on the other hand, it is an embarrassing situation for a country of this wealth and size to need to turn to agencies that are usually needed in places like Sudan, Liberia and other impoverished countries."