Wellington, March 29, SPA -- New Zealand will fund a helicopter to fly a team of four doctors into Indonesia's Nias Islands to treat earthquake injured, and Prime Minister Helen Clark promised more aid will follow in a telephone call to President Susilo Bambang Yudhyono on Tuesday. Clark said she expressed New Zealand's condolences to Yudhoyono, who has postponed his planned visit to Australia and New Zealand in the wake of the second earthquake tragedy to hit his country in three months. "Our immediate thoughts are with the people of Indonesia, particularly those living in its outlying islands who have borne the brunt of this devastating quake," Clark said. She said the days deadly tremor had compounded the humanitarian crisis caused by the tsunami last December 26, making it "a doubly distressing event". Aid Minister Marian Hobbs announced the government was co-operating with an organization called SurfAID, founded by New Zealand doctor Dave Jenkins, to get a medical team to the Nias capital Gunungstoli. Hobbs said Jenkins had reported that 70 to 80 per cent of Gunungstoli was destroyed and help was urgently needed to stop people dying. She said the medical team was being mobilized from the SurfAID base in Padang and New Zealand would provide further assistance as a fuller picture of the disaster unfolds. Clark said Yudhoyono, who had been due to arrive in New Zealand on April 2, was now expected to be in the country on April 6-7. --SPA 1147 Local Time 0847 GMT www.spa.gov.sa/250576
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