JAKARTA, Indonesia, Jan. 6 -- U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan urged world leaders on Thursday to quickly deliver some of the $4 billion in emergency funding pledged for tsunami relief, and U.N. officials expressed concern that some of the aid would never arrive.
Specific relief missions will require about $1 billion in the next six months for an estimated 500,000 people injured and 5 million affected in 12 countries by the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, which struck Dec. 26. "It is a race against time," Annan told reporters during an international summit of 26 countries and international organizations on tsunami relief and related issues.
"It is a race against time," U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said during a tsunami summit in Jakarta.
|
|
Indonesian and U.N. officials said Thursday that they planned to establish refugee centers capable of accommodating as many as 800,000 people displaced on Sumatra island. They said the first camps would open within a week and have space for 8,500 people.
Michael Elmquist, the U.N.'s humanitarian aid coordinator in Indonesia, said that the largest of the camps would accommodate 4,000 refugees but that each camp could ultimately expand to 10,000 people.
Concern about delivery of the $4 billion in aid -- which includes grants, loans and five-year staggered pledges -- was based on experience. Of the hundreds of millions of dollars pledged after the earthquake in the Iranian city of Bam in December 2003 that killed more than 26,000 people, only $17 million was confirmed by the United Nations as being delivered. Governments reported that they had delivered an additional $96 million, according to U.N. statistics.
To aid victims of the tsunami, Australia has pledged $810 million, Germany $674 million and Japan $500 million. The European Union on Thursday announced a pledge of $466 million. The United States has offered $350 million, in addition to a significant military rescue mission.
"Many of the pledges have come to us in cash and in kind," Annan said. "We need the rest of the pledges to be converted into cash quickly."
[Indonesian officials on Friday raised the death toll in their country by almost 20,000, to 113,306. That increased the overall number of deaths in the Indian Ocean region to about 160,000.]
The World Health Organization has warned that basic needs, such as clean water, food and medicine, must be addressed quickly or an additional 150,000 people may die from infectious disease.
Leaders at the Jakarta conference asked the United Nations to take the central coordinating role on humanitarian relief and agreed to work toward the development of a regional tsunami early-warning system.
The United States said it was dissolving the "core group" of six nations that initially managed the relief effort so the United Nations could begin to take overall control. But American officials said military relief flights would continue to be managed by a U.S. general stationed at an air base in Thailand.
Indonesian and U.S. officials, meanwhile, announced that the Bush administration would partially lift a ban on trade in military equipment to Indonesia so it can acquire spare parts for five C-130 Hercules aircraft. The ban has caused 17 of Indonesia's 24 C-130s to be grounded. It was imposed after a brutal 1999 crackdown in East Timor, then an Indonesian province.
In 2003, the Indonesian military used U.S.-made C-130s to drop paratroops to attack rebels in Aceh province, which suffered the greatest loss of life in the Dec. 26 tsunami. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell acknowledged that the United States had no assurances Indonesia would use the equipment properly, but he said that "the humanitarian need trumps right now the reservations we have."
Indonesian officials said Annan planned on Friday to visit Banda Aceh, the provincial capital where relief organizations are struggling to establish services and provide emergency care. There have been aftershocks in the region at least daily, including two strong quakes on Thursday, unnerving both the province's traumatized population and foreign relief workers.
Powell said at the conference that the United States would likely increase its contribution "as we understand the full dimensions of the catastrophe." The United States has also sent aircraft carriers and other military ships to assist in the relief effort "at considerable additional expense," Powell said.
In Washington, Congress passed legislation allowing taxpayers to claim deductions on their 2004 returns if they make donations this month to aid the tsunami victims. The bill was intended to encourage private donations.
Correspondent Alan Sipress in Banda Aceh contributed to this report.
