Rice defends Bush over hurricane response

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended President George Bush today against charges that the government’s sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina showed racial insensitivity.

“Nobody, especially the president, would have left people unattended on the basis of race,” the administration’s highest-ranking black said as she toured damaged parts of her native Alabama.

Some black lawmakers, Jesse Jackson and other black leaders have complained bitterly about the slow response to the disaster, whose victims have been disproportionately black and poor, particularly in New Orleans. They have said racial injustice was a factor in the government’s slow relief effort.

“I just hope that when people stop and think about it, they will just see that that’s just not the case,” Rice said. “How can that be the case? Americans don’t want to see Americans suffer.”

Since Katrina struck, an estimated 70 nations, from Azerbaijan to Venezuela, have offered more than $100m in cash donations to the American Red Cross, Rice said. Many countries have also donated supplies, ranging from helicopters to food, to help the victims.

After outlining the influx of international support, Rice said she had told Bush, “If there’s anything I can do outside of my responsibilities as Secretary of State, I’d be happy to do that too.”

Rice was attending services at the Pilgrim Rest AME Zion church outside Mobile and visiting a community centre in the ravaged Bayou La Batre, 45 minutes away. Flood waters following Katrina reached 11 feet in the area, about 718,000 homes and businesses in Mobile were left without power for days, and at least two people died.

The daughter of teachers and great-granddaughter of a cotton farmer, Rice spent some of her childhood in segregated Birmingham before her family moved to Denver.

Rice was greeted in Mobile by Alabama Governor Bob Riley, Senator Jeff Sessions and Representative Jo Bonner, all Republicans.