Annan to visit stricken regions
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UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will visit tsunami-stricken areas in south Asia following a donor conference this week in Jakarta, the United Nations says.
Annan will attend a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the Indonesian capital Thursday to press for pledges, U.N. spokesman Brendan Varma said.
The international community already has pledged $2 billion, but U.N. officials have said more will be needed.
Annan originally planned to reach out to countries through a conference at U.N. headquarters in New York on Thursday.
In an interview recorded Saturday with ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," he discussed the change.
"We have planned our own pledging conference here in New York on the 6th of January. And the leaders of the region are also getting together on the 6th. And so we've joined our efforts," Annan said.
"I've told them that we need to do it together. So I will go to Jakarta to launch the appeal from there, and work without the leaders of the region who are also determined to play a role," he said, according to a transcript released by ABC.
Varma told CNN the Indonesian government invited Annan to come to Jakarta.
The 10-member ASEAN includes Indonesia and Thailand, two nations in the path of destruction left by the tsunamis.
Indonesia was ravaged, with about 80,000 people killed, and the Aceh province in the north was largely wiped out. In Thailand, nearly 5,000 deaths have been confirmed.
In each place, and throughout the region, death tolls are expected to rise.
Annan will not be accompanied by other U.N. officials on his trip, Varma said. His itinerary was not released.
In the ABC interview, set to air Sunday, Annan said he had not spoken to U.S. President George W. Bush since the disaster, but has been working with Secretary of State Colin Powell, who leaves Sunday on a mission to the region along with Bush's brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
Annan continued to praise the "generous" and unprecedented response to the disaster from nations throughout the world.
He also echoed the words of U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland, who told reporters Saturday he hoped the generosity would be extended to other regions such as Democratic Republic of Congo, in which "thousands of people die every month," and Uganda.
Said Annan, "We call them the 'orphaned disasters.' ... They are not on the headlines; they are not on TV, and they are ignored and overlooked."
-- CNN Producer Chris Strathmann contributed to this report.
