Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Tuesday, May 31, 2005 |
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TEUREUBEUH (INDONESIA): The former U.S. President Bill Clinton traded jokes and tears with survivors as he ended a tour of tsunami regions in Indonesia on Monday but made a serious call to speed up efforts to rehouse thousands still living under canvas five months after the disaster. A relaxed Mr. Clinton shrugged off concerns over his health to travel to one of the areas worst affected by the December 26 catastrophe that left more than 217,000 dead and missing around the Indian Ocean and listen to the concerns of victims. ``The most important thing is we have to speed up building houses. This is the same problem everywhere that I have visited,'' he told reporters on his one day trip to Indonesia, the last of four countries he has visited as a U.N. tsunami recovery envoy. ``I heard this when I was in India and when I was in Sri Lanka. I talked to the people here, they hope that we can speed up building houses for them,'' he said. More than half a million people were left homeless by the tsunami in Indonesia's western Aceh region, seen as the ground zero of the 9.3 magnitude earthquake and the giant waves that followed. Mr. Clinton met people living in tents at Teureubeuh, a coastal village surrounded by mountains, after arriving by helicopter from the main city of Banda Aceh. One woman burst into tears, holding his hand as she implored him to build her a new home. He was also asked to name a newborn baby, but declined, asking locals to ``give him a name that means hope''. He was clearly in higher spirits than a day earlier when a visit to the Maldives was cut due to bad weather. Some reports said he was suffering from exhaustion possibly linked to his heart surgery last year. His tour of tsunami-stricken areas was partly aimed at answering frustrations felt by many tsunami victims.
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