PAKISTAN: The world should not allow "an avoidable tragedy be heaped upon an unavoidable tragedy" in Pakistan, President Mary McAleese said in Dublin yesterday. She warned that earthquake survivors could meet their deaths in harsh winter conditions "because the world did not care enough".
The President said she was "very disturbed" to hear from aid agencies that they were obliged to dig into their financial reserves to meet the enormous demand upon them in Pakistan.
"They are doing that in the hope, the expectation and the faith that the Irish people will follow through and will fill and keep refilling their coffers to enable them to do that very basic work of bringing life and hope and help where it is so sorely needed," she said.
The President was speaking during a one-hour visit to the Pakistan embassy in Dublin, where she met members of the Pakistani-Irish community and conveyed her condolences on the loss of life following the earthquake in the Kashmir region.
"The people of northern Pakistan have had the awesome experience of the terror of the three-minute earthquake, which now has given way to a terror of waiting." Those who had survived the earthquake now faced the terror of wondering if they would meet their deaths in "the wilderness of winter".
"That simply cannot be allowed to happen. I pray that the world will respond," she added.
In a statement, Fine Gael defence spokesman Billy Timmins TD said the establishment of a voluntary humanitarian corps would have enabled Ireland to respond much more quickly and efficiently to disasters such as the recent earthquake.
"Fine Gael in government will set up the voluntary humanitarian corps and have it operate under the co-ordination of the Defence Forces," he said.