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China rejects foreign help
14/05/2008 21:00 - (SA)
Beijing - China rebuffed international offers of sniffer dogs and search-and-rescue experts to help in its huge earthquake relief operation, but countries still sent cash and prayers on Wednesday.
Despite whole towns being flattened in Sichuan province, burying thousands, Australian expertise was on Wednesday politely declined and frustrated Japanese teams were forced to turn around at the airport.
South Korean specialists were also rejected even though China faces a race against time to find survivors buried under rubble in towns scattered across the remote and mountainous disaster zone.
"We were told that China cannot receive rescuers now due to poor condition of transportation systems," said a Japanese foreign ministry official in charge of emergency aid.
Japan is ready to dispatch rescue and medical teams of some 80 people, as well as sniffer dogs, the official said, warning that the opportunity for rescue was short.
Finding survivors
"In general, the possibility of finding survivors decreases after three days from a disaster," he said.
Australia also had a "fairly sizeable" team of search and rescue experts on standby to fly to the disaster area, but was also told Sichuan's shattered transport system made it impossible.
"The extreme challenges of transport and communication in the earthquake region mean that at this point the aid cannot be received," a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said.
China has mobilised 100 000 military and police, with troops parachuting and speed boating into remote areas while planes and helicopters air-dropped emergency supplies.
China said on Tuesday that the conditions were "not yet ripe" to accept foreign rescue teams.
The official death toll from the 7.9-magnitude earthquake has now reached about 15 000 with 40 000 missing or buried under rubble.
Japan has provided China with satellite images of the devastated area and China hoped to get images from the US, France and Canada under an international accord on disaster aid, state media reported.
Prayers
Pope Benedict XVI called for prayers for the victims of the disaster. "My thoughts go out at this time to the people in Sichuan and adjoining regions in China severely affected by an earthquake," the pope said during his weekly general audience at the Vatican.
Taiwan is sending volunteers and about 150 tonnes of relief goods for the rescue effort, officials said. Twenty-six volunteers from the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation would depart early Thursday, the foundation said.
Nineteen British tourists remain missing in the devastated region, the Foreign Office and a travel company said on Wednesday.
"We are doing everything we can to know where these 19 Britons are," a Foreign Office spokesperson told AFP, while adding that there were no confirmed British casualties from the quake.
A spokesperson for Travel Collection, part of the Kuoni holiday company, said: "All lines of communication to the region are down and as such no further information is known at this time."
France said it was sending a planeload of aid including tents, blankets and medical supplies worth some €250 000.
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