IRIN
PAKISTAN: UN Secretary-General issues fresh quake appeal
17 NOvember 2005


[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United 
Nations]

RAWALPINDI, 17 November (IRIN) - United Nations Secretary-General Kofi 
Annan arrived in Pakistan on Thursday where he made a fresh appeal for 
donors to urgently help victims of the 8 October South Asian earthquake.

Annan will attend a donor's conference on Saturday aiming to raise the 
US $5.2 billion Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf says is 
needed for the Asian nation to recover from the disaster. Musharraf has 
called funds received so far from international donors "negligible". The 
UN leader arrived at an airbase in Rawalpindi, near the federal capital 
Islamabad, for his three-day visit.

"We received some resources, but need much, much more to be able to help 
the people," Annan said on arrival. Saturday's conference, to be 
attended by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and other 
lenders, along with representatives from foreign governments and 
corporate leaders, will focus on the long-term task of reconstruction 
and rehabilitation.

He now expected the richer states and the private sector to contribute 
generously, not just for the relief operation but also for the recovery 
and reconstruction work in the areas devastated by the earthquake, which 
left at least 73,000 people dead and over 3 million homeless, according 
to official figures.

In addition to Pakistan's registered death toll, nearly 1,400 people 
died in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Quake survivors in the mountainous region of North West Frontier 
Province (NWFP) and Pakistani-administered Kashmir are becoming 
increasingly vulnerable with heavy snows and freezing weather 
approaching. There are also fears of disease spreading in squalid 
emergency tent settlements that have sprung up in what is left of the 
towns in the blighted region.

Annan, who had warned that there could be a second wave of death unless 
the world woke up to the scale of the disaster, said more lives would 
have been saved if aid had arrived faster.

The UN has so far received only $119 million and another $40 million in 
pledges out of $550 million it has been seeking since last month to 
finance emergency relief over six months.

On the same day as Annan arrived, civilians crossed Pakistan's disputed 
frontier with India for the first time since the earthquake.

More than 20 elderly men who had been visiting family in Pakistan when 
the quake struck, walked to the Indian side across a dry river bed under 
a damaged bridge at the Chakothi-Uri checkpoint. No one crossed over 
from the Indian side into Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

The move marked another step towards making good on a breakthrough 
agreement reached in October to let people from either side of Kashmir 
cross over at five points along the frontier to help relief efforts and 
allow divided families to reunite. Before today's crossing the two sides 
had only exchanged relief supplies.


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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 
2005


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