Clinton, Bush Visit Devastated Village

Former President Bill Clinton’s voice trembled with emotion as he and George H.W. Bush put aside their once-bitter political rivalry Saturday in a Thai fishing village where children gave them drawings of giant waves sweeping away their relatives.

Children in red caps and white shirts, waving paper U.S. flags, were among hundreds who greeted the former presidents in Ban Nam Khem, one of the first stops in their relief mission to the countries hardest hit by the southern Asia tsunami. About 2,000 people died in and around the village.

“I thought about all of our religious traditions and how they all teach us how we are not really in control. But we don’t really believe it until something like this happens,” Clinton said. “It reminds us all to be a little more humble and grateful for every day.”

President Bush asked his father and Clinton to lead the U.S. effort to provide private aid to hundreds of thousands of victims of the Dec. 26 tsunami. They also plan to visit Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a tragedy that affected the heartbeat of the American people as much as this tsunami,” said the senior Bush. “I don’t think you can put a limit on it. It’s so devastating. They’re still finding wreckage, still actually some bodies being recovered.”

At a news conference with the Thai prime minister, Clinton said governments and private individuals had committed $7 billion to tsunami relief in Asia but that $4 billion still was needed for a reconstruction process that could take two years. He attributed the global outpouring of support to the “staggering” scale of the disaster.

Indonesia suffered the highest death toll, with at least 120,000 killed. Most of the damage was in Aceh province, an area that has been torn by a separatist conflict for years.

Foreign aid workers and troops have been delivering relief supplies in the area. But Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Saturday that Islamic extremists could be planning to attack foreign aid workers in the province. He did not give any time frame for the possible attacks.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, however, denied that there was any new threat. While touring Aceh on Saturday, he said that he had checked with police and military commanders and that “there is no evidence that there has been a threat against the aid workers.”

Yudhoyono also said he was sending government negotiators to Finland to engage in talks with Aceh’s separatist rebels, perhaps as soon as Monday. The envoys are to outline a proposal to grant wide-ranging autonomy to the province of 4.1 million people.