U.S. accused of undermining the U.N. in providing tsunami aid

The U.S. is coordinating aid for the tsunami victims with three other nations:  Japan, India and Australia.  This has led to criticism from the U.N., claiming the U.S. is trying to undermine their efforts -- only they should be allowed to coordinate aid for the victims, their spokeswoman has said to BBC 4 in England.

United States President George Bush was tonight accused of trying to undermine the United Nations by setting up a rival coalition to coordinate relief following the Asian tsunami disaster.
 
... former International Development Secretary Clare Short said that role should be left to the UN.

She said the US was “very bad at coordinating with anyone” and India had its own problems to deal with.
 
“I don’t know what that is about but it sounds very much, I am afraid, like the US trying to have a separate operation and not work with the rest of the world through the UN system,” she added.

Given the U.N.'s success in the food-for-oil in which they "lost" over $20 billion in aid to starving Iraqis or the effort to bring aid in Rwanda, it is not entirely unreasonable that some larger countries might consider providing aid directly when faced with a tragedy of global proportions having extreme time constraints.

The U.N. is concerned on two grounds, they say.  The first is practical:  "the [four] coalition countries [do] not have  good records in responding to international disastors," Ms. Short said.  The second is moral, according to Ms. Short:

It [the U.N.] is the only body that has the moral authority.

UPDATE:  Others were curious about the U.N. claiming sole moral authority to act when, in fact, there appeared to be inaction on the part of the most senior officials there, including Kofi Annan, who stayed on his skiing vacation in Wyoming.  Here is a question posed to him at his press conference when he returned to New York:

Mr. Secretary, picking up on Richard's question, I think a lot of people are asking exactly why you waited three days on vacation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, before you decided to fly back to New York in the face of this extraordinary crisis. Could you give us a full explanation of your thinking on that? Secondly, what kind of signal does that 72-hour delay send to the nations to which you are now appealing for greater help?

His response was that "we live in a world where you can operate from wherever you are."