The United States government has accepted the United Nations offer of assistance in the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast and New Orleans, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan announced Sunday according to dpa. A small U.N. coordination team in Washington was meeting with government officials to decide "how best the U.N. can complement the United States' own emergency efforts", the spokesman said in a statement issued from U.N. headquarters in New York. "The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Food Programme, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the High Commissioner for Refugees are ready to provide emergency staff and a wide variety of relief supplies as and when necessary," the spokesman said.
