CNN
CRAWFORD, Texas (CNN) -- President Bush said Wednesday that he has formed an international coalition to respond to the massive tsunami disaster along coastlines of the Indian Ocean.
(snip)
He announced that the United States has "established a regional core group with India, Japan and Australia to help coordinate relief efforts. I'm confident more nations will join this core group in short order.
I'll be curious to see if much of the US gov't allocated funds are funneled thru this coalition instead of thru the UN department for humanitarian aid. Certainly the notion that another UN mishandling of funds meant for aid, as the Oil for Food programme was designed to do, could be eliminated with an alternative organization. Sadly, we have little reason to trust the UN officials to make sure the bulk of the funds are used for those in need, and not to line pockets of opportunists on the UN payroll.
Then again, since we do not have a detailed report of it's objectives, this coalition may have an entirely different purpose in mind... one of prevention measures.
"Clearly there wasn't a proper warning system in place for that part of the world," Bush said. "And it seems like to me it makes sense for the world to come together to develop a warning system that will help all nations." (Full story)
With Australia taking the lead, announcing it's intentions to revamp it's seismology warning system to include other nations abutting the Indian Ocean, it is only logical that the US and other nations should throw in with Australia to insure needless deaths do not occur in the future.
To my knowledge, there has been no UN response to the Bush announcement of this coalition.
U P D A T E!!!
The sniping begins....
Bush 'Undermining UN with Aid Coalition'
The Scotsman
United States President George Bush was tonight accused of trying to undermine the United Nations by setting up a rival coalition to coordinate relief following the Asian tsunami disaster.
(snip)
But former International Development Secretary Clare Short said that role should be left to the UN.
“I think this initiative from America to set up four countries claiming to coordinate sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the UN when it is the best system we have got and the one that needs building up,” she said.
“Only really the UN can do that job,” she told BBC Radio Four’s PM programme.
“It is the only body that has the moral authority. But it can only do it well if it is backed up by the authority of the great powers.”
Ms Short said the coalition countries did not have good records on responding to international disasters.
She said the US was “very bad at coordinating with anyone” and India had its own problems to deal with.
“I don’t know what that is about but it sounds very much, I am afraid, like the US trying to have a separate operation and not work with the rest of the world through the UN system,” she added.
Only the UN can do that job? The *only* body will "moral authority"???
True to past form, the self-described "working class feminist" (that outta get you, Alia...) Ms. Short holds to her "hate America" beliefs. She was leading amongst the voices accusing Tony Blair of conspiring with Bush to make war with Iraq, saying he deliberately lied about intel.
Indeed, she avowed to bring Blair down in her dramatic speech resigning from the Prime Minister's cabinet just two months after the US Coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Small wonder she's the first to pipe up on this Aid Coalition. Now the MSM talking heads are starting to pick up on this as well.
Hold on tight... "it's going to be a bumpy ride".
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