Lenihan to pressure EU partners over aid appeal

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Conor Lenihan is to write to EU colleagues and other countries which have not contributed to the appeal to aid south Asia's earthquake victims, in order to put pressure on them.

He was replying to Labour's foreign affairs spokesman Michael D Higgins who said "there has been an outrageous neglect in terms of the response, which represents a moral challenge".

Just $133 million (€113.17 million) has been pledged to the UN's appeal seeking $550 million for the stricken region and only $84 million has actually been paid. Mr Lenihan said "it is frustrating that not everyone is like us in providing money".

Ireland contributed €5 million of which €1.5 million went to key UN agencies and more than €2.5 million to Irish and other non-governmental aid agencies. The Government has also pledged €10 million to a new UN central emergency relief fund to allow agencies to respond quickly and effectively to sudden emergencies.

The Minister said it was "criminal" to assign the main disaster response role to the UN if it was not adequately funded.

He had met Pakistan's ambassador to Ireland who "pleaded with me to put pressure on other donor countries, including other European countries, to provide money to help out these people who are in a desperate and unconscionable situation.

"I have decided to write to my EU colleagues and to other countries which have not contributed to this appeal, in order to put them under pressure."

Mr Higgins, who raised the issue said "the misery of the response on this occasion is untypical" and was running at less than 25 per cent of the appeal made by UN secretary general Kofi Annan. "We now have three million people on their 30th night of living in the open with a specific request for their needs of 100,000 to 200,000 tents.

"The death rates - though we cannot judge their accuracy - are not below 175,000 with 70,000 injured," Mr Higgins said.

He expressed concern that the EU Commission's pledge of €80 million was conditional on back- ing from the Council of Ministers and called for pressure to be put on the ministers to back the commitment. Mr Lenihan was reluctant to give a commitment on that "as Europe has its own ways of working".