Posted on 03/31/2003 5:43:11 PM PST by mdittmar
The United Nations is expected to conduct a security assessment in the crucial port city of Umm Qasr in the next few days, a step that could clear the way for relief workers and urgently needed aid to start flowing into southern Iraq, U.N. officials said on Monday.
"The United Nations has a security team there. It's just got to be worked out with all the authorities involved -- Iraqi as well as U.S. and British," said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
U.N. international aid workers were all pulled out of Iraq just before the start of the U.S.-led invasion and are unable to return and resume their work until an area is determined to be safe by a U.N. security assessment.
The fierce fighting in some parts of southern Iraq has so far prevented the United Nations from carrying out an assessment but conditions have now improved to the point where a team has been sent in, U.N. officials said.
A determination that Umm Qasr, captured by U.S.-led forces, is safe would have a ripple effect as many private relief groups also rely on U.N. security judgments for their own humanitarian staff.
"At the moment, Oxfam is not going into Iraq because the situation on the ground is still very dangerous," said Nathaniel Raymond of aid group Oxfam America, which has staff and humanitarian goods waiting to be sent in along Iraq's border with Jordan and Syria.
"We won't go in there until we get the 'Gentlemen, start your engines' from the United Nations," Raymond said.
HUMANITARIAN CORRIDORS AN OPTION
Although parts of southern Iraq are suffering from shortages of food and water and other vital goods, only a few privately chartered trucks have managed so far to get into the area due to the fighting. Concerns have focused on a shortage of drinking water, particularly around Basra, Iraq's second largest city.
After Umm Qasr, Kurdish-dominated northern Iraq might well be the next priority for a security assessment so that international relief workers can return, U.N. officials said.
Ross Mountain, the U.N. deputy emergency relief coordinator, said in Geneva on Monday that a humanitarian crisis from the Iraq war could be averted if all parties to the conflict helped to get aid through.
"There does not have to be a humanitarian disaster if all parties cooperate," Mountain told a news conference.
He confirmed the United Nations was studying a number of options for supplying aid, including asking for humanitarian corridors to be created by the U.S.-led alliance which is besieging a number of southern Iraqi towns and cities.
Mountain, in Geneva for discussions with donor countries, said last Friday's green light by the Security Council to restart the U.N. oil-for-food program meant food supplies could soon begin to arrive.
"We believe that there are already goods in the pipeline that can be made use of," he said. Once aid began to arrive, the United Nations would try to quickly revive the Iraqi government network that distributed food aid before the war.
The U.S. Agency for International Development said on Monday it was shipping 28,500 metric tons of wheat to Iraq as part of a $300 million food aid package.
The wheat is being loaded onto a ship at Galveston, Texas, bound for Umm Qasr, a trip that should take about 33 days, it said. The shipment is part of some 610,000 metric tons of food aid earmarked for Iraq, the agency said on its Web site.
Even before the fighting began, 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people had been completely dependent for their food on the program, under which Iraq was allowed to sell oil and use the proceeds to buy civilian goods under U.N. supervision.
Iraq has been under international sanctions since it invaded Kuwait in 1990, triggering the 1991 Gulf War.
Keep Oxfam out of there altogether. They've always been a leftist front group doing humanitarian aid in order to gain credence for their left-wing agenda.
When the Iraqi paramilitary forces start killing aid workers and stealing the aid supplies, it will be very clear who are the "good guys".
they have 5 seconds to stop their trucks/cars/vans when ordered, then they get lit up.
Hopefully Kofi will show up at one of the check points.
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