The EU's aid coordination office in Brussels will manage the aid from member countries that have pledged relief supplies, including among others Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Estonia,and Luxembourg. At Washington's request, the EU will airlift blankets,emergency medical kits, water trucks, and food. The Netherlands said it was sending dyke experts to help deal with the problems of the damaged levees in New Orleans.

A NATO source said Washington had requested relief support in the form of 500,000 prepared meals and other items. NATO's Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Center would coordinate the 26-member alliance's individual pledges of assistance.

Channeling the emergency aid through NATO and the European Union creates better coordination, and at the same time spares the Bush administration from the possible embarrassment of having to accept the helping hand of individual governments and leaders it would rather not be beholden to, according to European observers.

Offers of emergency relief have been flowing into Washington from foreign governments since Tuesday when the primordial dimensions of the tragedy became apparent -- as did the apparent U.S. failure to deal with it effectively.

On Wednesday, France said it had readied for immediate delivery 600 tents, 1,000 camp beds, 60 power generators, three portable water treatment plants, two planes, two naval vessels, a hospital ship, and a 60-strong disaster relief team from its Caribbean possessions with experience in dealing with hurricanes. Germany was offering to airlift a huge quantity of relief material including vaccines, water purification equipment, medical supplies, and pumping equipment.

In dozens of world capitals American diplomats were quoting to foreign governments the statement by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that no offer of help would be rejected. At the same time, however, no foreign relief was actually accepted.

Rice explained that an assessment needed to be made of what was needed before making any specific requests.

International disaster relief has its political side. When the United States rushed to aid the victims of the Tsunami disaster in predominantly Muslim Indonesia and elsewhere in South Asia some commentators pointed out that seeing the United States engaged in humanitarian relief would hopefully yield a bonus in improving the American image in the Islamic world.

With Hurricane Katrina, the roles are reversed. Countries like France and Germany were hoping that coming to the aid of the United States would help repair the residual damage of earlier tensions over Iraq.

While Rice expressed gratitude for the offers of help, President George Bush seemed less prepared to accept foreign help, declaring that the United States can take care of the situation itself. Laura Bush, the president's wife, may have captured the essence of the situation, saying that the United States generally gave aid to others. Being at the receiving end "is a change for the United States."

One awkward problem is that of the 20 countries offering help a few, such as Fidel Castro's Cuba and Venezuela, make unacceptable bedfellows. Another is the barrage of scathing criticism of the Bush administration's failure to respond quickly and effectively that has served as a background to offers of help.

"After Katrina, the world offers helping hand to a humiliated America," ran the headline in the French paper Le Monde, Saturday.

Even as governments have volunteered help the London Financial Times noted that "there has not been the global upsurge of popular emotion and public donations...as occurred in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami. But the scale of the Asian crisis and the poverty of the affected countries both weighed heavily on public sentiment."

What has shocked the world after seeing the scenes of human misery on television is the racial dimension of the disaster. The people who were abandoned without help, food and shelter for almost a week in New Orleans were the black underclass. The hurricane, said Le Monde, had highlighted the country's social inequalities.

"America is the richest and most powerful country on earth, but its citizens, begging for food, water and help, are suffering agonies more familiar from Sudan and Niger," declared an editorial in the British paper The Guardian, Saturday. "The worst of the third world has come to the Big Easy."

The Bush administration has naturally bristled at charges from black leaders that it had been slow to react to the tragedy of New Orleans, which has left a death toll in thousands, because the victims were poor blacks.

But European diplomats in Washington noted on the margins of the tragedy the unfortunate fact that throughout the week the White House had not ordered flags lowered to half mast -- a sign of respect for the dead -- but did so Sunday following the death of Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

At the same time, the White House is planning several days of official mourning for the late Chief Justice, but has said nothing about a mourning period for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Comment on the Katrina debacle has filled the world's press all week. Many conceded that the size and sprawl of the affected area made relief work difficult, but also noted what they saw as the lack of proper organization and preparedness of the Homeland Security Agency, and therefore its efficacy to deal with a terrorist threat.

Again to quote Le Monde: "Despite the economic and military strength it is prepared to deploy overseas, the United States has shown itself incapable of dealing with a catastrophe of this dimension at home."

And there was the race factor. Not untypical was the Sunday comment in La Repubblica by Eugenio Scalfari, a leading left wing Italian editor. "The catastrophe had placed before the eyes of the United States and the world the reality of extreme inequality, and extreme degradation,"

Scalfari wrote. "It has also shown the extreme fragility of the leading country of the Western world, and of the values it wants to export and of which it pretends to be the main source, but which are absent in its own country a century and a half after the war of secession."

The natural disaster is not President Bush's fault, Scalfari goes one, but it shows that "American lives in every sense with Africa in its back yard. This situation doesn't seem to be a priority for America's ruling class; but this neglect is greatly worrying to America's real friends."

related report
World Offers Cash, Aid To Stricken Southern US
Washington (AFP) Sep 04, 2005 - The United States on Sunday officially asked for emergency aid from the European Union and accepted assistance from the United Nations, as countries around the world pledged help for the hundreds of thousands left homeless by Hurricane Katrina.

While US President George W. Bush initially politely refused offers of aid, the White House reversed course as the magnitude of the destruction wreaked across an area of the US Gulf Coast the size of Great Britain became clear.

From London to Kuwait City to Manila, governments around the world pledged help in the form of money, food, emergency workers and oil supplies.

Some countries suffering major problems of their own, among them Indonesia and Afghanistan, were among those lining up to offer help to the nation that is the world's largest donor of aid.

Washington has asked the 25-member EU for aid in the form of blankets, medicines, water and half a million food rations, the European Commission said in a statement.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said France would send its entire stock of emergency supplies, including tents, blankets, cooking equipment and camp-beds, prepositioned on the French Caribbean island of Martinique for just such an eventuality. Douste-Blazy said one shipment would leave from Fort-de-France within 24 hours and another within 48 hours.

Britain was to send 500,000 military ration packs to the devastated regions, the ministry of defence said Sunday.

The armed forces meal boxes -- which include a 24-hour food supply -- will be flown to the US early Monday to help feed the homeless.

Germany shipped 25 tonnes of food aid to the flood-stricken regions over the weekend, the defence ministry said Sunday.

An Italian military plane was expected to leave Sunday for the United States with first aid kits for 15,000 people, as well as infant food, blankets, pumps, water-purifying devices and inflatable rafts.

The United States also accepted an offer of UN assistance and consultations were underway on how to best complement US aid efforts, a UN spokesman said Sunday.

"The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Food Program, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the High Commissioner for Refugees are ready to provide emergency staff and a wide variety of relief supplies as and when necessary," the spokesman said a statement.

Kuwait is offering 500 million dollars (400 million euros) in oil products "needed by the afflicted states in these conditions and other humanitarian assistance," Energy Minister Sheikh Ahmad Fahd al-Sabah told the official KUNA news agency on Sunday.

Qatar had pledged 100 million dollars on Sunday.

Canada said Sunday it was sending thousands of camp-beds, blankets and medical supplies after a request from Washington for help.

"This is the beginning of an integrated effort. This is just a starting point of what we can give to our American friends," said Howard Njoo, Associate Director General Public Health Agency of Canada.

Thirty-five Canadian military divers have begun to arrive in the region to help with repair efforts.

War-torn and desperately poor Afghanistan has offered 100,000 dollars in disaster relief aid, the US embassy in Kabul announced Sunday.

The Indonesian government, still coping with the aftermath of the December 26 tsunami, has offered to send 40 medical doctors to the United States, state media said Sunday, quoting a senior minister.

South Korea on Sunday offered to donate 30 million dollars in cash as part of its planned humanitarian aid, officials said.

Over the weekend Norway offered the United States 10 million kroner (1.6 million dollars, 1.3 million euros) to help relief efforts.

Sri Lanka -- also still recovering from the December 26 tsunami which devastated the island's coastlines and killed 31,000 people -- said it had donated 25,000 dollars and asked doctors to help.

China said it would offer five million dollars, while Japan said it had proposed sending an emergency rescue team.

India said it will provide five million dollars and essential medicines, and has offered water purification systems for use in households and small communities in the stricken areas, where potable water is a key concern.

The Philippines announced the dispatch of a 25-member team of aid workers with the first 10 members of the team, consisting of doctors, nurses and sanitary engineers, scheduled to leave this week.

Cuba and Venezuela, two Latin American countries often singled out for criticism by administration of US President George W. Bush, were among the first to offer humanitarian assistance.

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