World pledges hurricane aid to US

0 Comments | AFP, September, 2005

PARIS (AFP) — The world is holding out its hands to a superpower in crisis, offering hurricane disaster aid to the United States from a French offer of ships and aircraft to a 25,000-dollar donation by tsunami-pounded Sri Lanka.

Offers streamed in after the United States, the world's biggest single aid donor, said it would be open to assistance though it was not making an appeal for foreign aid.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed the United States' "heartfelt" gratitude for the offers of aid that have poured in from around the world following Hurricane Katrina.

"We've turned down no offers," Rice said in a news conference, when asked about rumors that Washington had refused help from Russia and France.

Scenes of chaos -- explosions and...