US: The person at the centre of the United Nations's emergency relief operation is Mr Jan Egeland of Norway. On the first day after the tsunami struck, he criticised wealthy nations as "stingy" in development aid.
The UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Co-ordinator has 25 years of experience in humanitarian, human rights and peace work through the UN, the Norwegian government, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
As a top Norwegian foreign affairs official in the 1990s, he initiated national emergency preparedness systems, which have provided more than 2,000 experts and humanitarian workers to international organisations. He explained that his "stingy" remark referred to aid in general, not the tsunami aid. "What I said was that aid levels worldwide are going down, just as the need is increasing."
Mr Bush responded that the US is "a very generous, kind-hearted nation" and in fact no country spends as much on development assistance. But on a per capita basis, the world's richest and most powerful nation is not the most generous. It ranks seventh behind Canada, Britain, Australia, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands in a list of donor nations drawn up by the Centre for Global Development in Washington, which takes into account technical assistance and other non-financial help.
Ireland comes 18th in this list, just behind Greece. However, of 22 donor nations drawn up by the OECD in Paris ranking nations by humanitarian aid in dollars as a percentage of gross national income, the United States comes last. This list is also headed by Norway and Ireland comes eighth, ahead of Britain (12th), Canada (13th) and Japan (19th). America gives only 15 cents for every $100 of national income, compared to Norway's 92 cents, and another 6 cents in private donations, also less than Ireland and Norway. However, the view in America is prevalent that they are more generous than any other nation. "I don't take kindly to comments from the UN calling these miserly responses, when we're the ones who generally foot the bill, and we will in this one," said Republican Senator Sam Brownback.
Some Americans, however, say they should be giving more in a world where over half a million people die every month from malaria, AIDS and diarrhoea.
Americans donated $240 billion to charity in 2003, but 98 per cent did not leave the United States.
Mr Egeland is a former Fulbright Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and a fellow at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo.