Bill Clinton: Aid Agencies Need U.S. Cash for Haiti Quake Relief

Jan. 15, 2010— -- Former President Bill Clinton today called on Americans to open their pocketbooks and donate more cash to the ongoing earthquake relief effort in Haiti.

"We've got to have more," Clinton said on "Good Morning America." "We need more food, water, medical supplies and shelter materials in quickly."

Clinton, also the United Nations special envoy to Haiti, acknowledged that some Americans may be eager to travel to the country to help with the recovery and rebuilding, but, he said, such opportunities will would come later.

"Logistically, it's better if people just even have a little money to go ahead and give cash now," he said.

Crowding at the single-runway, Port-au-Prince airport has limited the number of flights that can land on the island at a given time and, once on the ground, huge cargo planes that take hours to unload are piling up on the tarmac.

"Yes, we will have bottlenecks," Clinton said. But, he said, the primary focus remains a search-and-rescue effort.

"We have about another week to dig through the rubble and clear out the basic structure of the streets. And, then, we've got to go through the recovery and rebuilding process."

The process will likely require hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid, something that Clinton has experience coordinating in his role with the Clinton Foundation and when he and former President George H.W. Bush collaborated to raise funds for victims of the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami.

The White House Thursday formally called on Clinton and former president George W. Bush to coordinate U.S. fundraising efforts.

"The president believed that the partnership that President George W. Bush created between his dad and former President Clinton was obviously a highly effective way of ensuring that after this ... search-and-rescue phase of this operation ... concludes, obviously there is still going to be a tremendous need -- and there will probably be a tremendous need for many, many months to come -- that that's the best vehicle and the most effective vehicle for setting that up," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said.