02:24 PM CDT on Tuesday, September 6, 2005

Robert Burns / Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The military's growing contribution to hurricane relief efforts in Louisiana and Mississippi will not diminish its capability to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday.

"Let me be clear: We have the forces, the capability and the intention to fully prosecute the global war on terror while responding to this unprecedented humanitarian crisis here at home. We can and will do both," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference.

There are still more than 300,000 Army National Guard and Air National Guard personnel available to help if needed, he added.

Appearing with Rumsfeld, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said more than 58,000 active duty and National Guard personnel are in the region in support of civilian emergency response agencies.

Of those, about 41,000 are National Guard troops from all 50 states, Myers said. The other 17,000 are active-duty Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps personnel. The Navy has 21 ships assisting the effort.

The Pentagon has about 140,000 troops in Iraq and about 20,000 in Afghanistan.

Earlier Tuesday, the commander of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division said that paratroopers plan to use small boats, including inflatable Zodiac craft, to launch a new search-and-rescue effort in flooded areas of central New Orleans.

In a telephone interview from his operations center at New Orleans International Airport, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV said his soldiers' top priority is finding, recovering and evacuating people who want to get out of the flooded city.

Caldwell, who arrived in New Orleans on Saturday night to what he described as "an absolutely chaotic situation" at the international airport there, said conditions are improving, including a gradual return of electricity.

He said he and his soldiers spend their days on the streets of Orleans parish and their nights sleeping on the ground at the airport, with no toilet facilities, no showers and only military packaged meals and water for sustenance.

"We can go for weeks like this," he said. "At least we'll have homes to go back to."

Caldwell said that about 3,000 82nd Airborne paratroopers from Fort Bragg, N.C., are there now and another 2,000 were due to arrive Tuesday. They are in addition to about 1,400 soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Division and about 600 from the 13th Corps Support Command arriving from Fort Hood, Texas. All should be in place by Wednesday, he said.

The Pentagon has insisted for days that no more than 5,200 active-duty Army soldiers, plus 2,000 Marines, would be sent to help with Katrina relief, but Caldwell said he plans to have about 7,000 soldiers by Wednesday. That is in addition to about 2,000 Marines who are going to assist in damaged areas of Mississippi.

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)