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India rebuffs foreign offers of help

NEW DELHI - As the United States and other nations pour in aid to tsunami-buffeted Asian nations, India takes its traditional stance, saying thanks, but no thanks.

India, a founder of the Nonaligned Movement of 116 mostly developing nations, typically proclaims it is capable of handling its own problems, politely telling allies and rivals alike to butt out. That message was conveyed to President Bush when he called, India's prime minister said Thursday.

"If and when we need their help, we will inform them," Manmohan Singh said. "Several countries have offered assistance to us. The president of the United States spoke to me; several other countries' statesmen have also spoken to me.

"I have told them that, as of now, we feel we have adequate resources to meet the challenge."

India's refusal does not include U.N. agencies and nongovernmental organizations already working in the region.

Bush said Wednesday that the United States, India, Australia and Japan had formed an international coalition to coordinate relief and reconstruction of the 3,000 miles of Indian Ocean rim walloped by Sunday's earthquake and the tsunami it unleashed.

Officials from those nations held "very productive" talks Wednesday night to review the relief efforts, U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Sri Lanka's best-known resident, science fiction writer and visionary Arthur C. Clarke, said Thursday that he and his family were safe, but regretted the lack of a warning system in his adopted home of Sri Lanka.

"I am enormously relieved that my family and household have escaped the ravages of the sea that suddenly invaded most parts of coastal Sri Lanka, leaving a trail of destruction," said Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey.