Call for pause in bombing to allow aid work

There should be a pause in the bombing of Afghanistan to allow humanitarian agencies to provide food and shelter before the critical November 15th winter deadline, the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, Mrs Mary Robinson, said yesterday.

Mrs Robinson said there was "a desperate urgency" to get humanitarian relief to the ordinary people of Afghanistan before the start of the winter snows left them "without shelter to starve and freeze".

Continual human rights abuses had been inflicted on the Afghan people as the Northern Alliance and the Taliban won and lost ground in their civil war, she said. While she appreciated the aid the United States had committed, she said "part of the problem was the approach to humanitarian relief.

Bombing on the one hand and then dropping some amounts of food and leaflets . . . that actually doesn't help the humanitarian cause in Afghanistan".

Mrs Robinson said she had recently sent a delegation to visit Afghanistan and it reported a difficulty for aid agencies and United nations personnel on the ground was that they were being identified with the United States and the West.

"It is tragic that the premises of UNICEF and the UNHCR were attacked in Pakistan because of the kind of identification with the West, with the US. The United Nations has to be very clear that it is not to be (so) identified," she said.

Speaking on the RT╔ programme Morning Ireland, Mrs Robinson stressed that any information she had concerning a possible pause in the bombing was coming from news reports.

She said nevertheless that such a pause would be very warmly welcomed by the aid agencies on the ground.

Mrs Robinson's comments were immediately welcomed by the Irish aid agency Goal, whose director, Mr John O'Shea, said "unless there is an opportunity for the food convoys to roll again starvation will grip a large part of Afghanistan very quickly".

The Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Ms Liz O'Donnell, who attended a specially convened meeting of EU development ministers in Brussels yesterday, also warned that "time is running out as winter approaches".

She added: "It is essential to secure a means for humanitarian assistance to reach those most in need and to protect the position of refugees in this conflict."