Race Not an Issue in Katrina Disaster, Says Bush

The director of the much-criticised federal emergency management agency, Michael Brown, resigned yesterday. The news of his resignation came as George Bush, on his first visit to New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, rejected suggestions that race had played a role in the slow government response to the flooding of the city.

Insisting it had been his decision to step down, Mr Brown said he had resigned to give the beleaguered agency a chance to refocus on the rescue and recovery effort. "As I told the president, it is important that I leave now to avoid further distraction from the ongoing mission of Fema," Mr Brown said in a statement.

Speaking in New Orleans, Mr Bush attempted to duck questions about the resignation. "I have been working," he told reporters. "I can't comment on something that you may know more about than I do." On his first trip to the region after the hurricane, Mr Bush had told Mr Brown, "Brownie, you're dong a heck of a job." But on Friday, Mr Brown was abruptly called back to Washington DC and operations in the Gulf coast were handed to Vice-Admiral Thad Allen.

A Fema official, R David Paulison, the head of the fire administration, was chosen to succeed Mr Brown. Pressure had increased on Mr Brown as discrepancies in his CV and his lack of experience in disaster management began to emerge.

In New Orleans Mr Bush, on the defensive after the relief debacle brought his popularity to new lows, toured the city on the back of a military lorry. He said it was "preposterous" to suggest the US military presence in Iraq had hindered the immediate federal reaction to the storm. "We've got plenty of troops to do both," he said.

He was most animated on the question of race. Standing alongside Ray Nagin, the city's black mayor who had on occasion heaped derision on Washington's role, he said: "The storm didn't discriminate and neither will the recovery effort. When those coastguard choppers ... were pulling people off roofs, they didn't check the colour of a person's skin." His tour had taken him through the empty streets of the historic French Quarter which escaped serious damage, and into some of the worst-hit neighbourhoods. But for many the president's first close-up look at the city's devastation was too late.

"I think it looks bad, he should have been down on the streets sooner," said Matt Cushman, 35, a paramedic from Raytown near Kansas City. VL Sanders, 55, who works at the Royal Sonesta hotel on Bourbon Street, said: "Just to turn up here for a photo op seems pointless."

The official death toll for Katrina has passed 400. One million people have been uprooted.

A court overturned a Fema order yesterday banning journalists from following the rescue operations in New Orleans, after a legal challenge from CNN.