NEW ORLEANS, Sept 13: Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina lashed the Gulf coast, President George W. Bush on Tuesday accepted responsibility for the first time for the government’s flawed rescue operation.

Speaking just a day after getting his first close-up view of the mess that Katrina made of New Orleans, Bush said the hurricane “exposed serious problems in our response capabilities at all levels of government.”

“To the extent that the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility,” Bush told a Washington press conference.

“I want to know what went right and what went wrong,” he added, one day after the beleaguered head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Michael Brown, resigned amid a torrent of criticism of the agency’s reaction to Katrina.

Bush was to make a speech on Thursday outlining his long-term plans for the stricken region, which encompasses parts of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.

New Orleans’ Louis Armstrong International Airport, meanwhile, reopened to commercial traffic, giving a sorely-needed boost to the city badly hit by the August 29 storm for which the official toll currently stands at 513 dead.

The facility welcomed a Northwest Airlines jet from Memphis, Tennessee, making the first non-relief or military flight to New Orleans since Katrina.

Two more passenger flights and a cargo flight were expected on Tuesday, and the rhythm should rise to some 30 inbound and outbound movements within a week, airport spokesman Michelle Duffource said. Before Katrina, the airport hosted around 175 flights a day.

And in a further positive sign, a state official said that all Louisiana children separated from their parents had been reunited with their families or placed with close friends.

The state Department of Social Services identified 50 children alone among the hundreds of thousands of people evacuated when Katrina roared across the state, spokeswoman Nanette White said.—AFP