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JAMPUR, PAKISTAN - In some places, the water covers everything, dotted only by the tops of mango trees. Even here, with homesteads and roads on slightly raised lands, mud-brick houses have dissolved and all that remains are pitiful piles of debris where they once stood.

Livestock and people camp on dirt roads that are often the only dry spot between acres of water. People cram into boats ferrying between villages, while a few motorbikes wend their way through the shallows.

As Pakistan grapples with a disaster, the United Nations promised $460 million in immediate aid on Thursday after the U.S. and other nations significantly upped their pledges.

The rush of promised help came after U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, addressing a hastily called meeting of the General Assembly, urged governments and people to be even more generous than they were in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and this year's Haiti earthquake, because the floods were a bigger "global disaster" with the Pakistan government now saying more than 20 million people need shelter, food and clean water.

"Pakistan is facing a slow-motion tsunami," Ban told the delegates. "At least 160,000 square kilometers of land is under water, an area larger than more than half the countries in the world."

Before the meeting, he said, donors had given half the sum the U.N. appealed for to provide food, shelter and clean water to up to 8 million flood victims over the next three months. But Ban insisted all the money was needed now -- and much more will be needed later.

After listening to speeches by high-level representatives of some 20 countries, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said he was assured that the $460 million goal "is going to be easily met," including "$100 million plus" from Saudi Arabia.

Aid groups and U.N. officials had worried about a slow response to the flooding, theorizing that donors who have spent heavily on a string of huge disasters in recent years are reluctant to open their wallets yet again.

Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, said before the meeting that he believed that where the tsunami and Haiti catastrophes happened suddenly, "for about 10 days people didn't realize that this wasn't just another flood."

Earlier Thursday, after visiting flood areas with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, U.S. Sen. John Kerry warned of extremists who might "exploit the misery of others for political or ideological purpose, and so it is important for all of us to work overtime."

Zardari spoke of militants who might take orphaned children "and train them as the terrorists of tomorrow."

Holbrooke said it's impossible to assess whether Al-Qaida or others are taking advantage of the floods because "we can't even get in there."

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the United States, already the biggest donor, would contribute an additional $60 million, bringing its total to more than $150 million, and that about $92 million would go into the U.N.'s relief coffers.

The European Union raised its pledge to more than $180 million. In addition, Britain said it would double its contribution to nearly $100 million, on top of $25 million in public donations, and Germany raised its aid to $32 million.

Holbrooke warned that "many billions" will eventually be needed to rebuild Pakistan. He challenged other countries, especially China, Pakistan's close ally, which was recently crowned as the world's second largest economy, to "step up to the plate."

China's representative addresses the second session of the meeting on Friday.

At a gathering before the U.N. meeting, Qureshi said the Chinese had increased their cash assistance, supplied relief goods and taken responsibility for providing food, water and shelter to some 27,000 people in an inaccessible area in the north.

The floods have affected about one-fifth of Pakistan's territory -- an area larger than Italy or Arizona -- straining its civilian government as it also struggles against Al-Qaida and Taliban violence.

The Associated Press and the New York Times contributed to this report.