Clinton's India Relief Effort

[Guest guest]

CLINTON INDIA FUND UPSTAGES BUSH

 

K.P. NAYAR

 

Washington, Feb. 3:

Relief efforts in the US to help victims of the Gujarat earthquake

received an unexpected shot in the arm yesterday when former

President Bill Clinton took the initiative to set up a country-wide

organisation to mobilise aid.

The new forum, to be called Americans for Indian Relief and

Reconstruction, will have an immediate fallout on what the US is

doing to help Gujarat.

 

First, it will create competition —- hopefully healthy —- with what

the White House and US government agencies are doing to reach aid to

the earthquake victims.

 

Second, with the most successful fund-raiser in US history pitching

in to help India, contributions by corporate America are expected to

outstrip previous expectations.

 

Within hours of Clinton's meeting yesterday with Victor Menezes,

president and CEO of Citibank and Citicorp, and a group of Indian

American corporate leaders in New York, White House spokesman Ari

Fleischer was asked what President George W. Bush thought of his

predecessor's first international initiative after giving up office.

Fleischer curtly replied that "the President has already taken a

number of steps to help the Indian government".

 

He was then specifically asked if the former President's initiative

had "annoyed" Bush. The spokesman merely responded that "he (Bush)

had no further thoughts on the subject".

 

The meeting that decided to set up Americans for Indian Relief and

Reconstruction was Clinton's first public engagement since leaving

the White House and moving to New York.

 

"The US is home to a lot of natural disasters and while, thank God,

we've never had as many people killed as were killed in this terrible

incident (in Gujarat) we've had earthquakes, we've had floods, we've

had massive fires, we have a lot of tornadoes every year," Clinton

told reporters at the Citibank headquarters after the meeting. "We

have experience and this is one of the ways we can help our friends

in India."

 

Before meeting the Indian Americans, Clinton spoke to Prime Minister

Atal Bihari Vajpayee and sought his advice on how best to organise

relief in America.