Bush says calamity aid helps US image

President George W. Bush said US aid efforts after Asia's killer tsunami would improve the US image in the Muslim world as fears receded that diseases and infections could kill many thousands of survivors.

Indonesia found almost 4,000 more bodies of tsunami victims, taking the global death toll for the disaster past 160,000. Despite that increase, signs of recovery were emerging.

Worries were fading that the death toll could double if disease broke out in afflicted areas, the World Health Organisation said. Life was starting to return to normal in towns and villages on battered Indian Ocean coasts with markets reopening and fishermen casting their nets at sea again.

"In... responding to the tsunami, many in the Muslim world have seen a great compassion in the American people," Mr Bush said in an interview with ABC News aired yesterday.

The president, initially criticised for a slow and limited US response to the tsunami, said he was "very impressed... by how quickly we have responded" to deploy military equipment and personnel for the international relief effort.

"I've got to tell you, our military is making a significant difference," he said.

Indonesia, which was worst hit by the December 26 earthquake off its western tip and subsequent tsunami, is the world's most populous Muslim nation. At least 110,000 people died in Indonesia and many thousands more are missing. More than 30,000 died in Sri Lanka, over 15,000 in India and 5,300 in Thailand. With deaths also reported in Malaysia, the Maldives, Bangladesh, Myanmar and east African nations, the total stands at more than 162,000.

The tsunami struck without warning in a region where such waves are virtually unknown. Thousands of lives could have been saved if Indian Ocean nations had a tsunami warning system similar to one operating in the Pacific, officials have said.

While countries race to set up a permanent Indian Ocean warning system, Japan and the US, which have decades of experience with tsunami alerts, will take on the job temporarily, Kyodo news agency reported.

Most of the deaths in Indonesia occurred in the oil-rich, western province of Aceh, also the scene of a decades-long insurgency. Jakarta, nervous about a large foreign presence in the area, has sought to restrict the movement of aid workers and has asked foreign troops to leave soon.

Australia, the US, Singapore, Malaysia, Germany, China, Spain, Pakistan, Japan and Switzerland have troops in Aceh to help in relief operations.

The US military is deeply involved, with helicopters from a naval carrier helping to ferry food, water and tents to the inaccessible interior of devastated Aceh province on the northwestern tip of Sumatra island.

Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla said foreign troops should leave Aceh by March 26, within three months of the tragedy, sparking a controversy.

"I am sure the Indonesian government will agree with me the most important thing is to save lives and not have deadlines," UN emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said in New York.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell downplayed the issue and Indonesian officials sought to retract Kalla's comments.

"That wasn't a deadline," Mr Powell told PBS television. "It was an expectation that the work would be finished, and there would not be a need for foreign troops after three months."

Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said in Berlin: "You can rest assured that we welcome even... foreign troops. Their presence is based on our request."

In Aceh, people were bemused. "What can we say? The most important thing is enough food for us but I think if they want to help out with the food then it's okay," said Nasrudin, puffing on a cigarette outside a refugee camp.

"We're not political people, we don't really know what's going on here."

The World Health Organisation said initial fears of epidemics were easing because most survivors now had access either to clean water or to water-purification tablets.

"The risk of large numbers of fatalities from disease is beginning to fade... I do not think we are looking at potential death from disease to match the tsunami," a spokesman said.

In a grim sign of progress, Aceh Vice Governor Azwar Abubakar said that by Thursday relief workers had buried 75,500 bodies from the disaster.

More markets opened in the provincial capital Banda Aceh, where excavators cleared debris and bodies from the streets. To the west, across 1,600 kilometres of ocean, fishermen in the Sri Lankan coastal town of Beruwela cast their nets for the first time since the tsunami, saying they had been too afraid to go down to the sea before.

The global response to the disaster has been unprecedented. Governments have promised $5.5 billion in aid, with individuals and corporations pledging at least $2 billion more.

The 19-member Paris Club of sovereign creditors has agreed an initial three-month debt moratorium to stricken nations while the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund assess the cost of recovery.