The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) is seeking $1.3 billion (€1.91 billion) for a "massive food operation" to avoid a catastrophe due to the war in Iraq, the WFP director, Mr James Morris, said yesterday.
Mr Morris said he was "optimistic" that "we have a plan that can avert massive starvation and massive human catastrophe".
Mr Morris, head of what he called "the largest humanitarian agency in the world", said that even before the war, the WFP was feeding a large percentage of the Iraqi population and had accelerated "the distribution of our supplies so that people had a little excess, a little surplus coming into the conflict."
"Assuming that people would have enough to get them through four, five, six weeks of conflict, at that point we would be required to come in and begin our work," Mr Morris said.
The United Nations last week relaunched the oil-for-food programme in Iraq and a British naval ship finally brought the first relief supplies since fighting started. Both UN and non-governmental aid agencies are standing by on Iraq's borders but are unable to go in since the US-British military coalition wants to distribute humanitarian aid itself.
Meanwhile, the southern city of Basra, where people are running low on water, is a battle zone, stopping even the military from delivering humanitarian aid.
"Our people can't go in until it's safe for them to be there," Mr Morris said.