Tsunami aid operation stumbles
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-01-05 14:58

A global push to reach survivors of Asia's tsunami faltered after a plane accident in Indonesia and heavy rain in Sri Lanka with the United Nations warning the death toll from the disaster could rise by tens of thousands.

With the official toll already reaching to nearly 150,000, US Secretary of State Colin Powell got a first-hand look at tsunami damage and expressed confidence his country's relief efforts would boost its battered image in the Muslim world.

Powell, accompanied by President George W. Bush's brother Jeb, toured relief operations on Thailand's resort island of Phuket and pledged US help in crafting a regional early warning system to head off future catastrophes.

Acehnese wait in a line for drinking water provided by the Australian military in the tsunami-hit city of Banda Aceh, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra January 5, 2005. The hungry scavenged for food and water and the wounded flooded hospitals in Indonesia's Aceh on Wednesday, as a global relief effort staggered to help survivors of the tsunami catastrophe. [Reuters]

He was on a three-nation tour to demonstrate the US commitment to the region after criticism that Washington was slow to respond to the tragedy.

After flying to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation and the country hardest hit by the tsunami, Powell put the US pledge of US$350 million in aid and its massive military relief operation in political perspective.

"I think it does give to the Muslim world and the rest of the world an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action," he told a joint news conference with Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda.

The invasion of Iraq last year chilled US relations with the Muslim world but Powell insisted, "America is not an anti-Islam, anti-Muslim nation. America is a diverse society where we respect all religions."

His regional tour includes attendance at a crisis summit Thursday in Jakarta.

Ahead of the meeting, the world's major industrialized countries and the Paris Club of creditor nations moved closer on Tuesday to freezing the debt of countries ravaged by the disaster.

An Acehnese patient sits in the corridor of a hospital in the Indonesian provincial capital of Banda Aceh January 5, 2005. [Reuters]

Britain, with the backing of the United States, and Italy joined growing calls in Europe for at least a moratorium on the annual debt payments of many of the almost a dozen countries battered by raging waters.

Britain's finance minister, Gordon Brown, said London would propose to the Group of Eight nations, which it currently chairs, to suspend immediately about US$3 billion owed by the hardest-hit nations.

Germany will donate US$668 million in aid to the devastated nations, increasing its pledge from about US$26 million, government sources said late Tuesday.

The decision will be approved at a special cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

If the added donation is confirmed, Germany would become the biggest donor in the disaster so far.

But the growing momentum to help those affected was suspended for several hours in the worst-hit Indonesian province of Aceh when an accident closed down the airstrip at Banda Aceh, the main hub for relief shipments.

A Boeing 737 cargo plane skidded off the runway after hitting a buffalo, hampering the delivery of relief supplies to an area where more than a million people have been affected by the devastating tsunamis.

Seven aircraft, ferrying medical officers, volunteers and medical supplies from Jakarta were stranded in the capital by the accident, although helicopters in Aceh were able to continue to airlift stockpiled aid as the plane was pulled off the runway.

In Sri Lanka's eastern Ampara district, where some 8,000 people were swallowed by the wall of water that battered 11 countries on December 26, torrential downpours hampered efforts to get food and medical supplies to thousands of homeless and hungry.

The United Nations on Tuesday said around 780,000 people were displaced in Sri Lanka.

Jan Egeland, the UN's emergency relief coordinator, said those people were now lodged in some 800 camps in the country, where half of the provinces have been "severely affected" by the disaster.

In Geneva, the World Health Organisation warned of a "health disaster" if access to drinking water was not resumed soon, while putting at 500,000 the number of people believed to have been injured in the disaster.

The confirmed death toll from the catastrophe neared 146,000, with 52 countries reporting nationals dead or injured.

The official number of dead on Sumatra island including Aceh, just off the epicenter of the powerful deep-sea earthquake that triggered the tsunamis, rose Tuesday to 94,100, with 387,607 people listed as displaced.

The UN's Egeland warned the total death toll from the waves that reached as far as Kenya may never be known.

"The death toll will grow exponentially on the western coast of Sumatra," Egeland told a briefing at the UN headquarters. "We may be talking tens of thousands of further deaths in this area."

The World Food Program (WFP) said hundreds of fishermen were probably killed in Myanmar, as Yangon put the tsunami toll at 53 killed and 21 missing.

"We are afraid that hundreds of fishermen may have died," WFP spokesman Simon Pluess told AFP.

"Some 30,000 people are in immediate need of shelter, food, drinking water and medical drugs," he said.

The number of Americans listed as missing in Asia has fallen to slightly more than 4,000, US officials said Tuesday, citing new information.

State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said the death toll had risen by one, to eight in Sri Lanka, with eight Americans confirmed dead in Thailand.

Secretary of State Powell began his trip to the region in Thailand, where he agreed to cooperate in developing an early warning system to avert future disasters amid outrage that the Indian Ocean lacked the technology available for the Pacific.

"We would like to have expertise and technical assistance from the United States to install an early warning system in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea," Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai said.

The Jakarta summit will also be attended by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and EU leaders.

Indonesia's Aceh province is ground zero for the disaster and more than 50 foreign aid agencies were trying to reach remote areas from Banda Aceh, backed by military personnel from countries including Australia, the United States, Malaysia, New Zealand and the Philippines.

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, with 6,000 sailors on board, is stationed off Banda Aceh with a fleet of helicopters so far flying in more than 22 tonnes of supplies to areas otherwise cut off.

Ships also scoured the seas for thousands of bodies still missing in India's tsunami-hit Andaman islands as India again refused offers of foreign help.

The overall Indian toll from the disaster was more than 15,500 dead and missing, the government said.

Amid a tide of pledges to help the tsunami victims, Scandinavian countries, whose nationals were the hardest hit foreigners when the waves swept up beach resorts in Thailand and Sri Lanka, also stepped up their aid for the crisis.

Norway's government said it would ask parliament to approve a further US$163 million on top of the US$16 million already approved.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Copenhagen raised its aid to US$75 million -- and claimed his country was the world's most generous on a per-capita basis.

The United Nations pressed countries to live up to their aid pledges for the Asian tsunami disaster, as nations and private donors pushed the total figure towards US$3 billion.

"We are well above US$2 billion," said the UN's Egeland but he cautioned that nations should keep their promises when it comes time to pay.

"Come with the money you pledge," Egeland said, recalling the Bam earthquake in Iran at the end of 2003, which got significant promises of help, many of which were never received.

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