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 Annan said that he will rely on Clinton to "make sure that donors not only pledge but disburse the money needed for recovery and reconstruction and that it actually reaches the communities who need it most."

Clinton and former U.S. President George H.W. Bush led a U.S. private fund-raising effort to help the victims of the December 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami in early 2005.

Clinton said that his position carries four responsibilities:

•  Ensuring funds are "well spent and accountably spent;"

•  Coordinating efforts to ensure that money isn't wasted or unnecessarily delayed;

•  Keeping the world's attention on the affected areas; and

•  Championing "the idea that we have a moral obligation to build these areas back better than they were before the crisis began."

The United Nations has estimated that more than 200,000 people were killed and up to 5 million more were left in need of basic services, housing and/or jobs in tsunami-affected Indian Ocean countries.  Over 92 governments have pledged $5.8 billion to the aid effort with several billion more raised by private individuals and corporations.

"As we move from relief to recovery and reconstruction, the most difficult period is upon us," Clinton said.

"Now we are in a period where the homes haven't been rebuilt, the jobs haven't all been restored, not all the fishing boats have been replaced," the former president said. "The sanitation facilities have not all be reconstructed, the wells have not all been dug.  All the things that have to be done must now be done."

Clinton that said he and the small staff assembled by the United Nations for this project hope to come up with a "set of best practices" for early warning systems for use in future disasters.

Pointing out that for the first time in history a great deal of money was raised over the Internet to help the tsunami victims, Clinton said that it is important for the United Nations to be accountable, effective and transparent to individual donors worldwide.

"If we can do a good job here, if we do our job, if we can report back to not only the big donors and the governments, but the NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and individual donors, if we can be accountable, if we can be transparent and if we can be effective, I hope that then the secretary-general will be able to issue a call - if we ever get an ultimate resolution of what should be done in Darfur [Sudan], for example, and in Somalia - for people to help there," he said.

Clinton said that he accepted the special envoy position "because I think the world has an enormous obligation when a tragedy of this magnitude hits, to help people repair their lives and to try to, in some small manner, compensate for the loss of life by rebuilding in a better, stronger fashion and by learning something from it."

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