Leaders Meet to Direct Aid Effort

With more than $3 billion in aid already pledged, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other world leaders gathered in Indonesia’s capital today to shape the sprawling international effort to assist victims of southern Asia’s deadly earthquake and tsunami.

U.N. officials praised the contributions of equipment, personnel and cash pouring in from around the world after the Dec. 26 disaster. But financial pledges, which include loans and lines of credit, often take months to materialize, they said.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan said U.N. officials hoped the conference would produce $977 million in immediate cash contributions to secure food, shelter and healthcare for survivors.

U.N. officials warned governments and separatist movements in Sri Lanka in Indonesia not to impede the delivery of aid. With an estimated 150,000 people already dead, the World Health Organization said the toll could double if survivors did not get access to clean water and other necessities.

“We now estimate that as many as 150,000 people are at extreme risk if a major disease outbreak occurs in the affected area,” said the agency’s director-general, Lee Jong-wook.

Australia on Wednesday pledged $765 million, and Germany $690 million, making them the two largest donors and pushing the total amount of aid promised to more than $3.5 billion. The high profile of the relief effort also was reflected in the level of participation at the Jakarta conference. In addition to Powell and Annan, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao were there.

U.N. officials said contributions were pouring in to their coffers so fast that they were uncertain Wednesday how much of the $977 million they already had.

“The goodwill and concern around the world are enormous. So are the challenges facing us,” Annan said as the conference opened. “We have seen everyone pull together.... Let us now show that we are committed for as long as it takes.”

U.N. officials also viewed the relief effort as a way to prove the continued worth of their organization, which is beset by scandal and doubts about its relevance.

“We must not fail,” said Jan Egeland, U.N. emergency relief coordinator. “This is the time we must show that we live up to the mandate that we are given.”

Powell, who traveled to the region with President Bush’s brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, got a firsthand view of the destruction Wednesday in a trip aboard a Navy SH-60 Seahawk helicopter over the battered Sumatran coast. Indonesia, the hardest-hit country, says that its death toll is at least 94,000.

Powell and Bush flew low over the town of Banda Aceh, then about 10 miles south along the coast to see how the earthquake and mammoth waves had obliterated communities and coated fields with mud and debris. They saw a landscape of overturned boats, smashed cars and pulverized homes. Thousands of bodies are believed to be entombed in the muck.

“I’ve been in war and I’ve been through a number of hurricanes, tornadoes and other relief operations,” Powell said. “But I’ve never been through anything like this.”

The key debate at the meeting was who would lead a recovery effort that has produced donations from 30 countries and help from dozens of international agencies and relief groups. Some diplomats, including Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and many Europeans, held the view that the United Nations is best positioned to lead.

But other delegates argued that national leaders should continue to make the substantive decisions, even if U.N. officials have the lead public role.

The U.S., which has pledged $350 million, has also sent 13,000 troops to the region and nearly 20 Navy vessels. An additional six Navy ships are en route, officials with the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii said Wednesday.

President Bush, who has urged Americans in recent days to make private donations to the aid effort, wrote checks being mailed Wednesday from his personal checking accounts to various relief agencies for more than $10,000, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters traveling with the president to Illinois.

The Navy hospital ship Mercy set sail from its home port in San Diego on Wednesday, loaded with relief supplies and medicine. The ship, equipped with 250 hospital beds, is expected to arrive in Southeast Asia in about 30 days.

Doctors and nurses can be airlifted from the ship to remote areas, and the ship can produce tens of thousands of gallons of potable water from saltwater every day, Pentagon officials have said.

U.N. officials said military helicopters from the United States and other countries were indispensable in reaching survivors isolated by washed out roads and bridges. The U.S. has provided about 50 helicopters. Australia and Singapore have provided another 50.

“I believe only the United States could do what has been done over the last 48 hours,” Egeland said. However, he added, “Even 100 helicopters is not enough to reach the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of devastated communities in Sumatra and Aceh.”

The aid effort was a way for the U.S. to improve its image in Indonesia, the world’s most-populous Muslim country, where many people are angry about the war in Iraq.

“Right now, we have forgotten about Iraq, we have forgotten about everything but our own problems,” said Ismail M. Syah, an editor of the newspaper Serambi in the town of Lhokseumawe on Sumatra. “There are no politics right now. We are happy to see the Americans.”

U.S. officials said that air-traffic control problems at Banda Aceh, the airport closest to the coastal disaster area, were limiting the number of military cargo planes arriving.

They said Indonesian authorities were relying primarily on air traffic controllers in Medan, 280 miles southeast of Banda Aceh.

The aircraft this week began carrying in supplies from a stockpile that includes 16,000 tons of rice, as well as soybeans and water purification kits. U.S. officials have also rented 80 trucks to reach Banda Aceh from Medan, but the trip takes three days because of road damage, said Andrew S. Natsios, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Sri Lanka, where an estimated 30,000 people died, and Indonesia face insurgencies. U.S. and U.N. officials warned the Jakarta government and rebels in Aceh province, as well as Sri Lankan authorities and the Tamil Tigers rebel movement, that continued fighting could delay relief supplies.

Natsios said that a firefight between the Indonesian military and Aceh rebels delayed a truck convoy for eight hours this week.

In Washington, the State Department said that the number of Americans presumed dead from the earthquake and tsunami had risen to 36. Previously, 16 Americans were known to have died.

Nineteen of the additional victims reported Wednesday were in Thailand and the 20th was in Sri Lanka.

An additional 3,500 Americans reported missing in the regions affected by the disaster still have not been found, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said in Washington.

“We will spare no effort, leave no stone unturned” to determine the fate of missing Americans, Ereli said. But he said the effort was complicated by the fact that the U.S., unlike other countries, does not track the exit of its citizens from its borders.

Officials have asked Thai and Sri Lankan authorities for the identities of Americans who entered those countries before Dec. 26. Ereli said that the Thai government already had provided the information, and that Sri Lanka was expected to do so.

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Richter reported from Jakarta and Farley from the United Nations. Times staff writers Esther Schrader and Maura Reynolds in Washington, Barbara Demick in Lhokseumawe, Indonesia, Christian Retzlaff in Berlin and Richard Marosi in San Diego contributed to this report.