Obama, with Bush and Clinton, seeks aid for Haiti

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama, flanked by his predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, on Saturday said the two former presidents would lead a national drive to raise money to help the survivors of Haiti's devastating earthquake.

"Presidents Bush and Clinton will help the American people to do their part, because responding to disaster is the work of all of us," said Obama, speaking in the White House Rose Garden. "In these difficult hours, America stands united."

Haitian authorities believe as many as 200,000 died in Tuesday's earthquake that devastated the Caribbean nation, prompting a worldwide humanitarian response as rescuers race against time to save people still trapped in the rubble.

Obama, who has pledged an initial $100 million in quake relief, enlisted the help of Bill Clinton, a Democrat who is the United Nations' special envoy for Haiti, and former President George W. Bush, the Republican who proceeded him the White House, to spearhead private sector fund-raising efforts.

Obama said they had launched the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund and directed Americans to visit the website at www.clintonbushhaitifund.org and give money.

The public has already responded to Haiti's plight.

Hollywood star George Clooney will host a telethon on MTV next week, the music network said, while Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have donated $1 million from their foundation to Doctors Without Borders.

A texting campaign that First Lady Michelle Obama made a public appeal for had raised almost $6 million by Thursday.

It was Bush's first visit to the White House since leaving office almost exactly a year ago to return home to Texas.

Since then he has kept a low public profile, but accepted Obama's request to join a bipartisan effort which echoed the mission he asked Clinton and his own father, former President George H. W. Bush, to perform after a massive earthquake in 2004 caused a huge tsunami in South Asia and killed 226,000.

Obama's high profile efforts to stay on top of the Haitian crisis may reflect a determination to counter criticism of his own initial reaction to a foiled Christmas Day bomb attack on a Detroit-bound plane, as well as from Bush's own experience.

Bush was slammed for what critics said was a slow and half-hearted response after Hurricane Katrina deluged New Orleans in 2005, stranding thousands of the city's mainly African American residents and providing the world with a

graphic view of festering inner-city U.S. poverty.

(Reporting by Alister Bull; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Editing by Sandra Maler)