01:11 PM CDT on Friday, September 2, 2005

Devlin Barrett / Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Rep. John Sweeney, R-N.Y., urged President Bush to appoint former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani or two former military officials to run the ground response in the Gulf Coast, saying local authorities are not up to the task.

Sweeney suggested Giuliani or retired generals Colin Powell and Tommy Franks could take charge of the much-criticized hurricane relief efforts.

"We owe it to the American people to have America's best leaders with experience on the ground running this," said Sweeney. "It's been painfully obvious over the last four or five days that the circumstances and challenges coming at us are new, are nothing that had ever been anticipated."

Sweeney said Giuliani proved his ability to lead in a crisis during the Sept. 11 attacks, adding the president should also consider Franks or Powell, men with long military resumes.

One prominent Republican, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, criticized the Bush administration for being sluggish, and urged the president to name Giuliani as the White House point person for relief efforts.

"We need to get the job done now, and I don't think anybody is better prepared to do that psychologically and otherwise than Rudy Giuliani," Gingrich said.

Giuliani has been traveling in Australia this week and only recently returned to the United States. His spokeswoman, Sunny Mindel, declined to comment Friday on calls for his involvement in the Hurricane Katrina response.

Gingrich said the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina "puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern Command planning for the last four years, because if we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?"

But Sweeney defended the Federal Emergency Management Agency in charge of the effort, blaming instead Louisiana and New Orleans officials.

"I think the federal response has been frustrated by the lack of experience on the ground from the local people to really coordinate this," said Sweeney.

When then-FEMA director Joseph Allbaugh responded to Sept. 11, Sweeney said, "There was real leadership on the ground. Joe Allbaugh did a pretty good job by taking direction from Mayor Giuliani."

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