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One of Norway's most internationally known diplomats, Jan Egeland, confirmed Friday that he'd gladly negotiate with al-Qaida, if it could help spread understanding and hope. "I wouldn't rule out conversations with the devil if it could help victims out of the depths of hell," Egeland told Aftenposten.no. Egeland, who helped broker Middle East peace pacts and most recently was the UN's foreign aid coordinator, was responding to a Reuters article about the possibility of negotiating with terrorist groups. In the article, Egeland won support for his views from former Anglican church envoy and hostage negotiator Terry Waite, who noted that...

GENEVA - U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said Friday the anger on all sides in the Middle East is the greatest he has seen in two decades of trying to help the troubled region make peace. "I've never seen nations as polarized as during this recent visit," said Egeland, who was in Lebanon, Israel and the Gaza Strip at the end of July. "People were enraged collectively in Lebanon, everybody against the Israeli indiscriminate onslaught," he said in an interview with The Associated Press. "In Israel, they were a united front to support the strong military measures. In the Palestinian...

BEIRUT, Lebanon - The U.N. humanitarian chief accused Hezbollah on Monday of "cowardly blending" in among Lebanese civilians and causing the deaths of hundreds during two weeks of cross-border violence with Israel. The militant group has built bunkers and tunnels near the Israeli border to shelter weapons and fighters, and its members easily blend in among civilians. Jan Egeland spoke to reporters at Larnaca airport in Cyprus late Monday after visiting Lebanon to coordinate an international aid effort. On Sunday, he toured the rubble of Beirut's southern suburbs, a once-teeming Shiite district where Hezbollah had its headquarters. During that visit,...

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — The U.N.'s top humanitarian official on Sunday denounced the Israeli airstrikes that have devastated Beirut and southern Lebanon, saying civilians were paying a "disproportionate price" in the attacks targeting Hezbollah strongholds. Jan Egeland inspected the destruction in south Beirut — a predominantly Shiite area that has suffered the brunt of the bombings. Israeli strikes hit the neighborhood hours before Egeland's arrival and six more missiles pounded it later, the first daytime attack there in days. "It's terrible. I see a lot of children wounded, homeless, suffering. This is a war where civilians pay a disproportionate price...

Israel's military blockade of Lebanon, as well as the Palestinian territories, was obviously in violation of international law as civilians suffered most from such actions, a senior UN official said here on Friday. "The law is simple. Civilians must be shielded. Civilians are protected persons. Civilian infrastructure is protected," UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland told a press conference. "If sealing off borders, if sealing off harbors, if bombing airports first and foremost means that innocent third parties cannot receive goods, cannot travel, cannot get to health facilities, cannot get their daily needs met ... Israel's blockade is...

ESIGODINI, Zimbabwe (Reuters) - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe on Friday accused a top U.N. envoy of being a "hypocrite and a liar" and said he would refuse to accept future emissaries from the world body if they were British agents. Mugabe told a conference of his ruling ZANU-PF party that U.N. humanitarian affairs and relief coordinator Jan Egeland had gone out of his way to insult and misrepresent Zimbabwe after he ended a four-day tour of the country this week. "You can see how they raise this, so that the rest of the international community can say 'human rights in...

Greedy hypocrites January 7th, 2005 The recent disparagement of American aid efforts to help tsunami victims as “stingy” by Jan Egeland, Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs at the United Nations, is merely the latest in a series of anti-American words and actions by Norway and Norwegians. While one might generously characterize some of these actions as merely the typical left-wing carping of self-styled “humanitarians,” or as the by-product of good intentions gone awry, a closer analysis reveals that a prime motivation of this disproportionate hostility might be based on that oldest of human failings: greed. Recent history indicates that the...

To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends on your definition of "charity." To the United Nations, and The New York Times, charity apparently is defined by how much a government offers to those in need from the money its citizens have coughed up to stay out of jail. To most Americans, charitable giving involves willfully directing cash from their own pockets and giving it to causes they favor - in this case helping the millions who survived the Asian tsunamis. The widely different mentality comes to the fore in the wake of the comments by U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland...

UN's Jan Egeland quickly backpedaled from his assertion Monday that wealthy nations -- which pay his salary and fund his work -- are "stingy" when it comes to aiding the relief effort following Asia's deadly tsunami. No lie. As President Bush noted Wednesday, the United States contributed 40 percent of aid relief for the world's emergencies in 2004. To be fair, Egeland didn't single out the United States as "stingy." What he said was: "(I)t is remarkable that we have no country up to the 1 percent line of foreign assistance in general and we have, I think, three Scandinavians...

"U.S.'s military assets worth their weight in gold."--Jan Egeland, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator. Jan Egeland of the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator is now (9:05 AM EST) being interviewed by Chris Wallace.

Q: Can you just flesh out in a little more detail the kinds of logistical problems you're facing? Are they problems of transportation, with coordination and other things? Just describe in a little more detail how that's unfolding and what you're facing. Mr. Egeland: Our main problems now are in northern Sumatra and Aceh. We have problems all over, and I agree that it is beyond the reach of all our combined resources in these five massive parallel operations from Somalia to Indonesia. In Aceh, today 50 trucks of relief supplies are arriving. They will have arrived because it's already...

Excerpt from article: The senior U.N. relief official who chided wealthy Western nations for being "stingy" with their aid was not "misguided and ill informed," as President Bush said on Wednesday, the newspaper wrote. U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland made the statement in reference to general aid supplied by the wealthy countries, but later praised the rapid international response to the tsunami that hit 12 countries Sunday. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/12/30/quake.usa.editorial.reut/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell responded to criticism from a U.N. official Tuesday, saying the United States is "not stingy" when it comes to providing aid to countries in distress. On Monday, Jan Egeland, under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief for the U.N., criticized the United States and other countries, saying the amount of foreign aid they gave was "stingy."