Powell Phuket, Thailand Diane Sawyer

Interview on ABC's Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer at the Wall of the Disappeared at City Hall Disaster Relief Center

Secretary Colin L. Powell Phuket, Thailand January 4, 2005 (7:02 a.m. EST

powell sawyer

MS. SAWYER: This morning, the Secretary and the President's brother got their firsthand account of the disaster. With the U.S. now giving $350 million in aid, questions persist about the U.S. initial offer, which was small, just 15.

"As you know, there's all kinds of second-guessing going on that America missed a great opportunity, particularly in an intensely Muslim area, to show good faith in the beginning."

SECRETARY POWELL: But, Diane, hang on, hang on, hang on. A little while ago, the Thai Foreign Minister and I gave a press conference, and what he said was the first person to call him, the first person to call the Thai Government, was me, last Sunday night. And I said to him, "What do you need?" And what we've --

MS. SAWYER: "But other countries were giving more."

SECRETARY POWELL: No, Diane, that's not right. We have to get this right because everybody keeps lingering on this story. The Japanese initially gave a fairly modest amount. It was only at the end of the week, when they realized the scale of the disaster, did they go up to 500 million. And so the United States has been in the lead: our ships were launched; our disaster teams were launched; task forces were set up; money started to flow immediately.

MS. SAWYER: And what about delivery of the aid? It could be several days before the remote and hardest hit regions get anything at all. A plane landing at Indonesia's main hub for aids flight crashed after hitting two water buffalo and delayed planes coming in. So far, relief groups have only been able to deliver one-eighth of the 400,000 tons of food flown into Indonesia.

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, this is what I will be looking at when I get to Jakarta and when I get up to Aceh. This is not a simple matter. Everybody thinks you can just magically move aircraft and helicopters and aircraft carriers across an ocean in a day, and why wasn't it done immediately, why didn't we just beam them in? It takes time. It's not just money. It's getting the food and the water and the other things, medical supplies, in place and then retail distribution through trucks, through helicopters, through air drops perhaps, through C-130 on remote landing strips. And so it takes time to generate such an effort.

2005/29 [End] Released on January 4, 2005