Kuwait Pledges $500M for Hurricane Relief Updated: Sunday, Sep. 4, 2005 - 11:26 AM
KUWAIT CITY (AP) - The oil-rich Persian Gulf state of Kuwait said Sunday it will donate $500 million in aid to U.S. relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina.
The offer is the largest known put forward since the hurricane ravaged Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and follows a $100 million aid donation from the emir of a Mideast neighbor, Qatar.
Kuwait's energy minister said his country would provide "oil products that the disaster-stricken states need in addition to other humanitarian aid."
"It's our duty as Kuwaitis to stand by our friends to lighten the humanitarian misery and as a payback for the many situations during which Washington helped us through the significant relations between the two friendly countries," Sheik Ahmed Fahd Al Ahmed Al Sabah said in a statement carried by Kuwait's official news agency, KUNA.
Kuwait is one of America's closest Mideast allies and owes its 1991 liberation from Iraqi occupation forces to a U.S.-led coalition that drove Saddam Hussein's army out. |