UN appeals for $357m for flood-ravaged Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: The United Nations on Sunday launched an appeal to raise 356.9 million dollars under its Rapid Response Plan 2011, which will be spent initially on 91 projects in the flood affected areas of Sindh and Balochistan, due to heavy monsoon rains.

The Rapid Response Plan 2011 was launched here at a local hotel by Humanitarian Coordinator of United Nations, Timo Pakkala at a ceremony where Minister for Information and Broadcasting Dr. Firdous Ashiq Awan was the chief guest.

Representatives of diplomatic community, UN organizations, government departments, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and others were present on the occasion in which the UN Humanitarian Coordinator launched this plan.

The Rapid Response Plan has been launched on the appeal made by President Asif Ali Zardari after his visit to the flood affected areas of Sindh when he phoned the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for generating funds from the international community to help the victims due to gravity of the devastation caused by unprecedented rains.

It is an initial plan for emergency needs, which will be reviewed after a month to assess the actual needs, when the complete destruction and damage data will be compiled from the affected areas.

Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan while addressing the launching of the Rapid Response Plan said unprecedented heavy rainfall have affected  23 districts of Sindh and five districts of Balochistan.

The Minister said the situation further compounded due to a number of breaches in all the irrigation channels and Left Bank Out Fall Drain.

Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan said, unfortunately 342  precious lives have been lost due to the floods while 633 persons were injured and millions of people are vulnerable to different diseases, particularly acute respiratory infections, diarrhea, malaria and  infections.

She said, “More than 7.1 million people have been directly affected out of which 491,000 people have been accommodated in 2618 relief camps.”

As many as 1.3 million houses have been damaged and over 6 million acres of land including 2 million acres cultivated land has been affected, she added.

The Minister said heavy damages to property, infrastructure, agriculture and livestock have been reported, however, the actual damages could be ascertained after detailed damages and needs assessment is carried out.

The Information Minister said the Government of Pakistan, under the dynamic leadership of President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani, despite being faced with resource constraints, has so far mobilized approximately 166,000 tents, over 869,000 family food packs and a large number of other relief items including blankets, mosquito nets, water purification units, medicines and jerry cans etc.

She said, “The government had tried its best to cope with the situation by itself, however, due to the sheer scale of the disaster it came to the conclusion that the situation exceeds the capacity of any single stakeholder.”

She said in view of this President Asif Ali Zardari requested UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to supplement the Government’s efforts.

The Minister hoped that the people of Pakistan would receive similar generous support as has been extended by friends and international community in the past for the Rapid Response Plan of $356 million.

“We are confident that the Rapid Response Plan – Pakistan Floods 2011, launched today, jointly by Pakistan Government and the UN would receive the required funds from donors,” she added.

The Minister said Pakistan government together with the UN would ensure transparency and accountability in the utilization and delivery of the assistance to the affected people in a most efficient manner.

She said it is natural disaster as people of Pakistan especially living in Sindh are unfortunately once again passing through great hardship due to unexpected and unprecedented heavy monsoon rains.

She said Pakistan is prone to hydro meteorological disasters; however, the frequency and intensity of such disasters have increased in the recent past, primarily due to climate change phenomenon experienced all over the world.

The Minister said a well placed three-tier disaster management system consisting of district, provincial and national disaster management authorities has been evolved by the government.

Referring to the issue of visa and permission to the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international community to reach to the flood affected areas, the Information Minister assured that there is no such problem and government of Pakistan has been facilitating the donors in this regard.

She said previous response of international community so far was due to Pakistan’s personal efforts at international level while the UN has launched its campaign today and expressed the hope that there will be good response of this campaign.

Humanitarian Coordinator of United Nations, Timo Pakkala while announcing the Rapid Response Plan said it is basically for the 91 projects identified initially to provide shelter, food, medicines and clean drinking water in the affected areas.

He said the UN has already started supply of food, shelter, medicines and other basic needs of life to the flood affected areas without waiting for the funds to be generated.

Timo Pakkala said this plan is for initial response to the victims and it will be reviewed after 45 days to revise the needs and demands of the people of the affected areas.

Giving some details, he said, with the present resources of Pakistan government, only 30 percent shelter could be provided to the homeless victims.

He said out of 5.44 million affected people there are 2.60 million women and 1.96 million children, while 1.8 million people have been displaced and 1.0 million houses have been damaged.

He said 64 percent people in the flood affected areas are without clean drinking water while 67 percent food stock of the people had been destroyed.

He said 70 percent crops in the area have been damaged while 280,000 families have lost their livestock.

Replying to a question, Timo Pakkala said so far no country has announced its pledge under the Rapid Response Plan 2011 adding that some of the countries have already announced their donations before.

He however clarified that it will be up to the donor countries either they want to contribute directly on bilateral basis or they can contribute through this Rapid Response Plan.

He said Rapid Response Plan is for providing immediate relief and after its revision, a fresh plan would be prepared for reconstruction, rehabilitation and improvement of other basic facilities to the flood victims.

Brigadier Sajid Naeem, representing National Disaster Management Authority explained the contingent plan and ongoing efforts of the NDMA for the assistance of flood victims.

He said NDMA has been coordinating with other departments of the federal and provincial governments and international community to provide best possible help to the flood victims without delay.

He said the NDMA had already prepared a contingent plan according to the reports of Met office, but the rains were much more than the assessments of Met office and beyond the capacity of the canals and rivers that created more damage. AGENCIES

Libya’s Gaddafi presses offensive after son killed

TRIPOLI: Muammar Gaddafi pressed an offensive against rebel forces, and his supporters burnt Western embassies after the Libyan leader survived a NATO airstrike that officials said killed his son and three grandchildren.

Funerals were expected to be held on Monday, an occasion that might bring an awaited appearance or declaration by Gaddafi who authorities say was in the Tripoli house when it was destroyed by at least three missiles late on Saturday.

Gaddafi, fighting a rebellion against his authoritarian 41-year rule since mid-February, has not been seen in public since the attack, though a spokesman said he was unhurt. His son Saif al-Arab, 29, was killed with three young grandchildren.

The embassies of Britain and Italy were attacked and burnt, along with the U.S. commercial and consular affairs department after Gaddafi loyalists were shown on Libyan television vowing vengeance. The buildings had been vacated weeks earlier.

Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim said the strikes were a fourth attempt to assassinate Gaddafi. He denied allegations in some media that the deaths had been fabricated to discredit NATO. The alliance said it hit a command and control centre.

Any appearance of an assassination attempt against Gaddafi is likely to lead to accusations the British and French-led strikes are exceeding the U.N. mandate to protect civilians.

French surgeon Gerrard Le Clouerec, who does not work for the Libyan government, was asked to independently identify the bodies of Saif al-Arab and two children. He said all three had died due to a blast. He said the children’s faces had been obliterated by the blast so they were difficult to identify.

Le Clouerec said he also saw the body of a young man of about 30, with a beard and a thin moustache whose face matched a photograph he had been shown of Saif al-Arab.

ROCKETS HIT MISRATA PORT

Gaddafi’s forces fired rockets at the port in Misrata on Sunday as an aid ship was trying to unload, rebels said, and the shelling forced two other vessels to wait offshore. The port is the lifeline for Misrata which has been under siege for weeks.

“Shelling the port is disastrous for us because it will sabotage all the humanitarian aid we are getting,” said rebel spokesman, Ahmed Hassan. “God help us if this happens. God protect our port.”

Libyan state television said the port was shelled to stop NATO from delivering weapons to the insurgents. The rebel spokesman said that was a lie.

Rights groups say hundreds of people, including many civilians, have been killed in Misrata, about 200 km (130 miles) east of Tripoli. Officials in Tripoli deny targeting civilians, and say they are fighting armed gangs and al Qaeda sympathisers.

Rebels have repelled government troops from the centre of Libya’s third largest city in recent days and now say they have gone on the offensive to try to capture Misrata airport.

The frontline in eastern Libya has been static west of the town of Ajdabiyah for a week with government troops digging in and rebels attempting to train and regroup.

In the west, Libyan government forces are fighting to dislodge rebels from the Western Mountains after they seized control last month of the Dehiba-Wazin crossing, opening a passage for food, fuel and medicine.

The sound of heavy bombardment and small arms fire echoed through the mountains on the Libyan side of the border.

Artillery shells fell on and around the town of Dehiba on the Tunisian side of the border, residents told Reuters, the site of an incursion on Friday by forces loyal to Gaddafi that provoked fury in Libya’s western neighbour.

Refugees poured across the border into Tunisia on Sunday.

“I never thought I would have to leave my house but today, at the age of 80, I find myself forced to flee with my family, without taking any possessions and without knowing where I’m going to stay here in Tunisia,” said a Libyan man who fled the rebel-held town of Zintan.

U.N. WITHDRAWS STAFF

Britain expelled the Libyan ambassador and Italy condemned the attack on its embassy as a grave and vile act. Most Western countries closed their embassies in Tripoli before the NATO military intervention began several weeks ago.

Deputy Foreign Minister Kaim called the attacks on the embassies “a regrettable action. These actions happened after 3:30 in the morning. That’s why our police force were outnumbered by the number of demonstrators.”

The United Nations withdrew its international staff from Tripoli after a crowd entered their compound.

“A crowd of people entered a U.N. compound and some vehicles were taken. All U.N. staff are safe and accounted for,” Martin Nesirky, a U.N. spokesman, said. “The decision to leave the country was based on the overall security situation in Tripoli.”

The U.N. sent international staff to Tripoli only last month after it reached an agreement with the Libyan government on a humanitarian presence. These staffers would now cover Western Libya from neighbouring Tunisia, the United Nations said.

“They have the right to do so because of what happened this morning,” Kaim said. “My understanding is it is a temporary withdrawal.” AGENCIES

Suicide attack hits Afghan army bus in Kabul-police

KABUL: A suicide bomber attacked an Afghan army bus on the outskirts of Kabul on Saturday, wounding up to 10 soldiers and civilians, less than a week after a suicide attack on a foreign military base in the city, a police spokesman said.

US Koran burning ignites explosive Afghan cocktail

KABUL: Afghan fury over the burning of a Koran in the US has been fuelled by disillusion with the West over the war, public outrage by President Hamid Karzai, and the rising voice of radicalism, experts say.

While there has been little violent reaction in the rest of the Islamic world to the stunt by an obscure Florida pastor, at least 24 people have been killed in Afghanistan in recent days, including seven United Nations employees.

The wave of bloody demonstrations started with last week’s UN attack in the relatively peaceful northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, eight days after Karzai condemned as “disrespectful and abhorrent” the burning of the Koran.

There had been scant coverage of the burning of the holy book in Afghanistan before Karzai, who has a history of anti-Western outbursts, launched his fresh salvo against the United States.

Some experts suggest he drew attention to the incident in a bid to boost his own popularity in his country, which has declined during nearly 10 years of a US-led war.

Karzai’s spokesman Waheed Omer has defended his boss by saying that people in Afghanistan would have found out about the Koran burning even if Karzai had not spoken about it.

But political analyst Haroun Mir said: “Suddenly after the Afghan president… talked about it, then there was a wind in Afghanistan.”

Mir added that since Karzai’s re-election in 2009, the president’s criticism of Western institutions had increased, while the voices of radical elements at work in Afghanistan have become louder.

It is these ultra-conservatives who have been at the forefront of the protests, while moderates have not dared to venture out to make public statements against the mob anger.

“A number of groups are using this event, I mean the burning of the holy Koran, in order to incite violence,” Mir added.

“And unfortunately, there is a total absence of moderate voices in the country right now that could counter this.”

That is also linked to rising anti-Western feeling in Afghanistan, where 130,000 international troops, around two-thirds from the United States, are stationed fighting the Taliban insurgency, other experts say.

Thomas Ruttig of the Afghanistan Analysts Network said there was a “general frustration about what the international community has achieved and not achieved in this country.”

He highlighted little improvement in the lives of most ordinary Afghans, who still live in grinding poverty, in the past decade.

In addition, mistaken killings of Afghan civilians in military operations by NATO-led forces have been high on the news agenda recently, along with reports of an alleged rogue US army unit “kill team” targeting civilians.

Both have been sharply and publicly condemned by Karzai.

Ruttig added that the intense sensitivity of religious issues in Afghanistan should not be overlooked as a factor in why the protests have snowballed.

“Afghanistan is not a secularised society,” he said. “This kind of provocation and attacks on the holy book are taken very seriously and are very sensitive.”

The attacks have been widely condemned, while the White House has criticised the Koran burning as “un-American” and Karzai has ordered an investigation into violence in Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar, where the worst incidents happened.

More demonstrations are feared — several hundred people gathered in Kabul Tuesday although that passed off peacefully.

However, Mir sounded a note of warning, saying: “It doesn’t mean that if until now there’s nothing going on in Kabul, nothing will happen.” AGENCIES

World powers raise pressure on Gaddafi to go

LONDON: Britain and the United States stepped up pressure on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to quit on Tuesday, and rebels fighting him promised to build a free, democratic state if they won power in Tripoli.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, opening a conference of 40 governments and international bodies on Libya, accused Gaddafi’s supporters of “murderous attacks” on people in Misrata, Libya’s third largest city.

“As this broad range of countries gathers here today in London, there are people suffering terribly under Gaddafi’s rule. Our message to them is this: there are better days ahead for Libya,” Cameron said.

Japan nuclear crisis far from over, UN agency warns

TOKYO: Japanese engineers struggled on Sunday to pump radioactive water from a crippled nuclear power station while the United Nations’ chief nuclear inspector said the crisis triggered by this month’s earthquake and tsunami was far from over.

Thirty UN rescue teams on standby

GENEVA: Thirty international search and rescue teams stand ready to go to Japan to provide assistance following a major earthquake, the United Nations said on Friday.

“We stand ready to assist as usual in such cases,” Elisabeth Byrs of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA) told Reuters in Geneva. “Thirty international search and rescue teams are on alert and monitoring the situation and stand ready to assist if necessary.”

UN disaster assessment and coordination teams, who deploy in emergencies worldwide to try to locate and treat survivors, normally include sniffer dogs and medical teams.

The biggest earthquake to hit Japan in 140 years struck the northeast coast on Friday, triggering a 10-metre tsunami that swept away everything in its path, including houses, cars and farm buildings on fire. (Reuters)

Kadhafi seeks UN, AU probe into Libyan unrest

PARIS: Moamer Kadhafi said he wanted the United Nations or the African Union to probe the unrest rocking Libya and promised investigators free access, in an interview published Sunday.

The strongman, making his first such demand since the outbreak of violent protests against his rule and the ensuing bloody riposte, also warned that the unrest would spell disaster for Europe.

“First of all I would like that an investigatory commission of the United Nations or the African Union comes here to Libya,” he told the French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche.

“We will let this panel work unhampered,” he said, adding that he would be in favour of France “coordinating and leading” the probe body.

Shortly after the unrest broke out, Kadhafi”s son Saif al-Islam, long seen as a possible successor, said he wanted an independent domestic probe into the unrest.

On February 22, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Navi Pillay also called for an independent international investigation and an immediate halt to serious abuses committed by Libyan authorities.

Kadhafi underscored that the violence posing the greatest challenge to his more than four decade rule would have serious repercussions for Europe, which has been facing an uphill battle to stem clandestine immigration, especially from North Africa and Asia.

“Thousands of people from Libya will invade Europe,” he said, “and there will be no-one to stop them.”

Kadhafi repeated an oft-repeated charge that the revolt against his regime was being spearheaded by Al-Qaeda. (AFP)

Ecuador recognizes state of Palestine

Ecuador has become the fifth South American country to formally recognize an independent Palestinian state. President Rafael Correa signed the Ecuadoran government’s official recognition of Palestine as a free and independent state with 1967 borders, Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement

.The statement said Ecuador’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state vindicates the valid and legitimate desire of the Palestinian people for a free and independent state and will be a contributing factor to a peaceful coexistence in the Middle East.

The border mention refers to the boundaries that existed before Israel captured East al-Quds (Jerusalem), the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Earlier this month, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay recognized Palestine as an independent state. Their move drew harsh condemnation from Israel and was opposed by the US House of Representatives as well.

The House on December 15 unanimously approved a resolution opposing unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state. The resolution urged the White House to deny recognition to any unilaterally declared Palestinian state and veto any resolution by the United Nations Security Council to establish or recognize a Palestinian state outside of an agreement negotiated by the two parties.

Holbrooke passes away

Richard Holbrooke, who was President Barack Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, died on Monday, an administration official confirmed. He was 69 years old.

The veteran US diplomat, who brokered the 1995 peace agreement that ended the Balkans war, had been a key player in Obama’s efforts to turn around the faltering 9-year-old war in Afghanistan. Holbrooke, who also served as the US ambassador to the United Nations and to Germany and twice was assistant secretary of state, died after surgery on Saturday to repair a tear in his aorta. He fell ill at the State Department on Friday. His portfolio included serving as the US ambassador to the United Nations and Germany and he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize seven times. Holbrooke joined Obama’s administration in 2009 as special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, a tough job co-ordinating the approach to trouble spots that are key foreign policy priorities for Obama. Holbrooke had been very critical of President George W. Bush’s Afghanistan policy. His position in the Obama administration was considered critical as the new president sought to crackdown on Al-Qaeda and a resurgent Taliban in the region.

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