UNITED NATIONS, 2 April 2003 — The United Nations is expected to conduct a security assessment in the crucial port city of Umm Qasr in the next few days, a step that could clear the way for relief workers and urgently needed aid to start flowing into southern Iraq, UN officials said on Monday. “The United Nations has a security team there. It’s just got to be worked out with all the authorities involved — Iraqi as well as US and British,” said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
UN international aid workers were all pulled out of Iraq just before the start of the US-led invasion and are unable to return and resume their work until an area is determined to be safe by a UN security assessment. The fierce fighting in some parts of southern Iraq has so far prevented the United Nations from carrying out an assessment but conditions have now improved to the point where a team has been sent in, UN officials said.
A determination that Umm Qasr, captured by US-led forces, is safe would have a ripple effect as many private relief groups also rely on UN security judgments for their own humanitarian staff. “At the moment, Oxfam is not going into Iraq because the situation on the ground is still very dangerous,” said Nathaniel Raymond of aid group Oxfam America, which has staff and humanitarian goods waiting to be sent in along Iraq’s border with Jordan and Syria. “We won’t go in there until we get the ‘Gentlemen, start your engines’ from the United Nations,” Raymond said.
Although parts of southern Iraq are suffering from shortages of food and water and other vital goods, only a few privately chartered trucks have managed so far to get into the area due to the fighting. Concerns have focused on a shortage of drinking water, particularly around Basra, Iraq’s second largest city.
Australia said yesterday it hoped Umm Qasr would be open within days to allow two shipments of wheat aid to dock, but was considering other delivery methods if delays continued. Defense Minister Robert Hill said Australia could announce an alternative to landing at Umm Qasr, which was used last week by British supply ship Sir Galahad to unload much-needed aid after the port was cleared of mines. Hill said while the 100,000 tons of Australian bulk wheat shipments were in the Gulf or the near vicinity, they could not dock until the shipping channel was more extensively cleared of explosives.
After Umm Qasr, Kurdish-dominated northern Iraq might well be the next priority for a security assessment so that international relief workers can return, UN officials said. Ross Mountain, the UN deputy emergency relief coordinator, said in Geneva on Monday that a humanitarian crisis from the Iraq war could be averted if all parties to the conflict helped to get aid through. “There does not have to be a humanitarian disaster if all parties cooperate,” Mountain told a news conference.
He confirmed the United Nations was studying a number of options for supplying aid, including asking for humanitarian corridors to be created by the US-led alliance which is besieging a number of southern Iraqi towns and cities. Mountain, in Geneva for discussions with donor countries, said last Friday’s green light by the Security Council to restart the UN oil-for-food program meant food supplies could soon begin to arrive.
The US Agency for International Development said on Monday it was shipping 28,500 metric tons of wheat to Iraq as part of a $300 million food aid package. The wheat is being loaded onto a ship at Galveston, Texas, bound for Umm Qasr, a trip that should take about 33 days, it said. The shipment is part of some 610,000 metric tons of food aid earmarked for Iraq, the agency said on its website.
Meanwhile, two US Army helicopters flew small amounts of humanitarian aid into a captured airfield in central Iraq yesterday as an initial step to try to win over the local population and undermine Iraqi resistance, officers in Najaf said. The two Black Hawk helicopters delivered a total 760 liters of bottled water and 580 ready-to-eat meals in what the pilots said they hoped would be the first of many such humanitarian flights. “We’re just giving them food and water and hoping that our help wins over some of the Shiites,” one of the pilots, Capt. Eric Then, told AFP correspondents allowed on the flight.
