Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, President George W Bush returned to the region promising to spare no effort in rebuilding the city. Denis Staunton reports from New Orleans
Mr Bush was due to spend the night on a US warship anchored near New Orleans.
Recovery teams have found fewer bodies in the city than they feared, indicating the final death toll from the disaster could be much lower than the 10,000 predicted last week. Soldiers and forensic experts are touring flooded streets in flat-bottomed boats, entering every house to search for the corpses of those who may have been trapped inside.
Mr Bush's visit to the Gulf coast came on the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, highlighting the contrast between his handling of the two national crises. The president's decisive response to the attacks in 2001 earned him the respect of many Americans who believed he united the country and showed strong leadership.
His response to Hurricane Katrina has attracted sharp criticism and a Newsweek poll published yesterday found the president's approval rating had fallen to 38 per cent, its lowest level since he took office. Most Americans no longer trust Mr Bush to make the right decisions in a foreign or domestic crisis, the magazine's poll found.
The White House last week recalled the controversial head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's recovery effort, Michael Brown, to Washington, but Fema has faced fresh criticism over the weekend after it withdrew a scheme to issue evacuees from the Gulf coast with a $2,000 debit card to cover urgent expenses.
Democrats and union leaders have also criticised Mr Bush's decision to suspend rules that would set a minimum wage for workers engaged in rebuilding the stricken regions. They argue that the decision will allow private contractors to exploit evacuees who have lost their jobs and who seek work rebuilding their own communities.
Barack Obama, the only black member of the US Senate, said yesterday that Mr Bush appeared to lack empathy with the hundreds of thousands of people, most of them poor and African-American, who were worst affected by the hurricane.
"It's puzzling, given his immediate response during 9/11, that he did not feel a greater sense of empathy toward the folks that were experiencing this enormous disaster," he said.
"There was a terrific spin operation, but not the kind of soul-searching that I think you'd want to see from any administration, Democrat or Republican," he said.
Senator Mary Landrieu (Democrat, Louisiana), on CBS's Face the Nation television programme, said the administration was trying to shift blame to local officials.
"While the president is saying that he wants to work together as a team, I think the White House operatives have a full-court press on to blame state and local officials," she said.
In Louisiana yesterday, the official death toll stood at 154. Mississippi, the other hardest-hit state, had 211 confirmed killed.
There were also fatalities, though much lower numbers, in Alabama and Florida.