Clinton says Annan picked him for tsunami "guilt"

UNITED NATIONS - Former US president Bill Clinton on Monday said Secretary General Kofi Annan picked him as the UN's Asian tsunami recovery envoy to heap guilt on nations that have pledged money but not paid up.
"He thought I could guilt-peddle my former colleagues better than anyone else he could think of," Clinton said at a conference here aimed at boosting private efforts to help with future disaster relief worldwide.
"Countries have a notorious reputation for committing massive amounts of money when people are dying on television -- and then when the TV cameras turn off, they don't give the money," Clinton said.
Around two billion dollars of the roughly 6.7 billion dollars pledged after the December tsunami in Asia, which left more than 217,000 people dead in a dozen countries, is already in the pipeline, a UN relief spokeswoman said.
The conference was co-sponsored by the Business Roundtable, a group of CEOs of top US companies headed by Hank McKinnell, the chairman and chief executive of pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer.
Jan Egeland, the UN's emergency relief coordinator, called the response to the tsunami disaster "the most effective relief effort in modern times" and urged more cooperation with the private sector to address future disasters.
"The US business community is ready for a more structured partnership," Egeland told reporters.

04/25/2005 18:01 GMT