On Katrina, Europeans extend help, criticism

The U.N. created a special task force to dispatch disaster experts, while the European Union volunteered to send water supply specialists.

Italy offered two military transport planes loaded with pumps, generators, amphibious craft and tents. Germany pledged medical supplies. France dispatched rescue workers to determine what it could offer. NATO pledged its help, too.

Offers from the Balkans, Sri Lanka
In the Balkans, where the U.S. military has been deployed to keep the peace following a decade of conflict, offers were steeped in gratitude. A Bosnian television station offered to raise money. In Kosovo, a civil emergency unit made up of former ethnic Albanian rebels offered to send a team to help rebuild.

Elsewhere, Asia-Pacific nations, including tsunami-battered Sri Lanka, pledged money and disaster relief experts.

“There should not be an assumption that because America is the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, this isn’t a major challenge and a major crisis,” Australian Prime Minister John Howard told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

El Salvador, the only Latin American country with troops still in Iraq, offered Thursday to send soldiers to the United States to help police zones flooded by Hurricane Katrina.

The French city of Orleans also rallied to help its hurricane-hit American namesake. The city south of Paris planned to donate money raised from ticket sales at local sports matches to help hurricane victims in New Orleans, a statement from City Hall said Friday. Orleans and its university also offered to take in 50 students from the University of New Orleans for the school year.

University offers
The proposal to take in 500 students from New Orleans at the University of Innsbruck in Austria for the winter semester was more personal. The two universities, both in cities that boast rich cultural histories, have spent decades building bonds of friendship and community.

The two universities have exchanged students in summer programs for three decades, placing hundreds of students per year, largely in business studies. Many of the program’s alumni have offered to assist, said Mathias Schennach, who heads the Austrian university’s international relations office.

The offer came only days after the western province of Tyrol suffered severe flooding of its own.

“People here have cold winters and avalanches — so we are familiar with the dangers of nature,” Schennach said. “There is an understanding that if someone is in need, you help.”

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