Iraq 'still ripe for disaster'

2003-05-03 17:02

Baghdad - Iraq is still ripe for a humanitarian disaster even though the shooting has all but stopped, the UN chief of mission here warned on Saturday, saying too many people were going without food, water and power.

"We have not yet got over the hump. The conditions for the development of a humanitarian disaster still exist," Ramiro Lopes da Silva said, flanked by other UN officials who fled Iraq two days before the war began March 20.

"It's (already) a humanitarian disaster in the sense basic services have collapsed or are at the risk of collapsing if we don't put them back into shape rather quickly," he said.

Lopes da Silva, making his first briefing to reporters since returning to Baghdad on Thursday, said nearly two-thirds of Iraqis were fully dependent on food aid and that malnutrition was rampant.

Many are drinking unsuitable water which is causing infections, especially in the south, and still have no electricity. Hospitals which were looted in the aftermath of the war are overwhelmed and lack medicines and equipment.

The United Nations slapped sanctions on Baghdad after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait that sparked the first Gulf war. Saddam Hussein's regime said the sanctions were responsible for the deaths of more than one million children.

Before the latest war, about four percent of Iraqis suffered from severe malnutrition and nearly a quarter of them never got enough to eat, Lopes da Silva said.

To counter the crisis, he said the United Nations would establish a "collaborative relationship" with the US reconstruction office here despite being so far sidelined by Washington for any political role in Iraq.

He also played down rifts between Washington and the United Nations, which did not specifically authorise the US-led war to topple Saddam Hussein.

"Our aim here is not to replace the administration of the country," he said, adding that UN staffers would work largely to "fill the gaps" in the US-led reconstruction efforts.

Forming a multinational force

A senior US official said on Friday the United States and its allies were forming a multinational force to "stabilise" Iraq and would not seek a UN mandate for the task.

There was a consensus in Washington that the UN role should be limited to "what it does best" - humanitarian affairs, dealing with refugees and internally displaced people, and reconstruction, the official said.

"This is a rather fuzzy situation," Lopes da Silva said. "It is not a situation like Kosovo or Afghanistan, where parallel to the humanitarian assistance, the UN had a broad mandate."

Iraq is counting on oil wealth to rebuild the battered country but in the meantime, Lopes da Silva said, funding for the relief effort would come from an urgent UN appeal for $2.2 billion issued to international donors.

He said the UN security council was also granting temporary access to revenue from outstanding contracts under the oil-for-food program.

The program, which let Saddam's regime sell oil under tight UN supervision to purchase basic goods, was suspended just before war broke out but was renewed by the Council later that month.

Lopes da Silva acknowledged that, because of the sanctions, many here blamed the world body for the hardships in the last dozen years.

But he said the UN's image "depends very much on whom you speak to among the Iraqi population" and said he believed there was a way to win back the confidence of the Iraqi people.

"If we bring added value we will be welcomed," he said. "If we are unnecessary, and the Iraqis have the right to tell us (this), we will pack and move."

- AFX