Thu, Jan 06, 2005 page1

• Taiwan left out of donor confab

  CINDERELLA Despite Taiwan's being one of the top 10 donors, it was not allowed a seat at the summit to discuss history's largest relief operation

  • By Melody Chen / STAFF REPORTER IN TAIPEI
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  Taiwan has not been invited to a summit of major donors to the relief operation in the wake of the tsunami which devastated countries around the Indian Ocean on Dec. 26.

  This is in spite of Taiwan's being one of top 10 donors of aid, having pledged US$50 million to the relief effort.

  

  An aerial shot shows flattened houses near the sea coast of Banda Aceh, yesterday. US Secretary of State Colin Powell toured Indonesia's tsunami-ravaged Aceh province yesterday and said the devastation wrought by the disaster was the worst he had ever seen.

  PHOTO: AFP

  While the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the Indonesian government which is hosting the summit that it would like to attend, Jakarta didn't even bother to reply.

  Ministry spokesman Michel Lu (呂慶龍) declined to comment on whether Indonesia, which received considerable aid from Taiwan since the disaster, has treated Taiwan unfairly by barring it from the conference.

  "We simply want to express our strong hope that we can attend the meeting," he said.

  Taiwan has concentrated its relief efforts on Thailand and Indonesia and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen (陳唐山) called on the international community to allow Taiwan to join the Jakarta conference, at least in the capacity of an observer.

  Meanwhile destruction on Indonesia's tsunami-wracked Sumatra island is the worst US Secretary of State Colin Powell has ever seen, the battle-seasoned war veteran said as he prepared for a meeting of world leaders to coordinate history's largest relief operation.

  "I can not begin to imagine the horror that went through the families and all of the people who heard this noise and then had their lives snuffed out by this wave," Powell said yesterday after flying over flattened villages along Sumatra's northern coast, which was home to two-thirds of the nearly 150,000 killed across Asia.

  "I've been in war and I've been through a number of hurricanes, tornados and other relief operations, but I've never seen anything like this."

  So far US$2 billion has been pledged to relief efforts in 11 countries hit by the Dec. 26 quake off the western coast of Indonesia that triggered waves causing deaths as far away as East Africa.

  But the challenges are enormous, with millions homeless and threatened by disease. The UN said it will build camps on Sumatra for up to 500,000 people.

  Haggard, dehydrated tsunami survivors have been flooding hospitals. Psychologists were struggling to help children cope with the unspeakable tragedy. Aftershocks added to the threats, with another strong quake felt yesterday, rattling the region but causing no known injuries.

  Powell was one of the first to arrive in Indonesia ahead of today's donor's conference, where world leaders will iron out problems coordinating the relief operation and discuss the need for a tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean. One already exists in the Pacific.

  From an altitude of a few hundred meters, Powell and his entourage saw not a tree or building standing along the coast. City block after city block in Banda Aceh, the main city on northern Sumatra, had been swept clean. A large ship lay on its side, half submerged in water and mud.

  The former US army general said he saw "how the wave came ashore, pushing everything in its path -- cars, ships, freighters overturned -- all the way up to the foothills, and then starting up the foothills until finally the waves came to a stop."

  Money has poured in from around the world, the largest share from Japan.

  "I think Japan must do as much as it can to help," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said, calling for companies in the world's second-largest economy to respond with donations to the kind of disaster seen "only once a century."

  But the fragility of relief and rehabilitation efforts was underscored by the temporary closure Tuesday of the main, overstretched airport in Sumatra. Yesterday, a load of aid supplies fell from a US helicopter over the island's city of Medan, hitting a shopping mall. No one was hurt.

  Pilots, meanwhile, were ferrying survivors from hard-hit towns and villages in the region to medical help. But that created a new challenge for relief workers: bottlenecks at overcrowded hospitals.

  About a dozen people lay on stretchers on the sidewalk outside Fakina Hospital in Banda Aceh. Many of the hospital's rooms had no power. Walls were flecked with blood and doctors had run out of stands for intravenous fluid bags, hanging them from cords strung across the ceiling.

  "It's heartbreaking," said Leslie Ansag of Everett, Washington, a Navy medic from the American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which was off Sumatra to help the rescue effort.

  In Thailand, where more than 2,200 foreign tourists were among 5,000 killed, police said they were searching for a 12-year-old Swedish boy last seen leaving a hospital with an unknown man the day after the tsunami hit.

  Also see stories:

  Realtor donates NT16.9 million for disaster relief

  Self-styled doctors pose health risk to survivors

  But can we do the right thing closer to home?

  Editorial: Don't exclude Taiwan's aid efforts
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