MUZAFFARABAD, 22 October 2005 — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited earthquake survivors in Pakistani Kashmir yesterday and called on the world to prepare for disasters the way it does for wars.
Erdogan, whose country has pledged $150 million in aid to Pakistan, became the first foreign government leader to tour the Himalayan region since it was hit by an earthquake on Oct. 8 that killed more than 50,000 people.
“My wish is this — the world is using resources for armaments, they should also put aside resources for such disasters,” Erdogan told reporters as he toured the destroyed Pakistani Kashmir capital Muzaffarabad.
Erdogan, who was accompanied by Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, said Turkey, which was one of the first countries to send rescue teams after the disaster, was committed to long-term help.
“We should not stop in the initial help. We have to fulfill our humanitarian duties from the short term to the long term, from infrastructure to housing,” Erdogan said.
Erdogan, dressed in a suit with an open collar, toured Turkish hospital tents in Muzaffarabad where Turkish volunteers greeted him and some patients presented him with flowers.
“We are grateful to the government of Turkey for the relief goods. ... We are very proud of you, sir,” said Maj. Gen. Khalid Nawaz, the Pakistani commander in Muzaffarabad, who briefed Erdogan on relief operations.
Turkey responded a day after the earthquake by sending search and rescue teams, doctors, food and other relief goods to the fellow Muslim country.
Erdogan visited Kashmir despite a strong earthquake in his own country yesterday. One person died of a heart attack and several others were injured in the fourth big quake to shake the western Turkish city of Izmir since Monday.
Meanwhile, alarm mounted across the world yesterday for hundreds of thousands of survivors of the Pakistan earthquake still awaiting help two weeks after their world collapsed, with a freezing winter looming.
The few roads into the high hills were crumpled, buried by landslides, even swept away by the quake and aid officials on the ground are worried that countless more people, without adequate shelter, cold and miserable, could die.
Lt. Gen. Salahuddin Satti said he hoped the road up Jhelum Valley would be reopened in a week but it would take six weeks for the nearby Neelum Valley.
“It’s a very, very major task,” he said.
The lack of roads means supplies cannot reach them in any significant quantities by an aid fleet of fewer than 100 helicopters.
