UN Secretary-General issues fresh quake appeal

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrived in Pakistan on Thursday where he made a fresh appeal for donors to urgently help victims of the 8 October South Asian earthquake. Annan will attend a donor’s conference on Saturday aiming to raise the US $5.2 billion Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf says is needed for the Asian nation to recover from the disaster. Musharraf has called funds received so far from international donors "negligible". The UN leader arrived at an airbase in Rawalpindi, near the federal capital Islamabad, for his three-day visit. "We received some resources, but need much, much more to be able to help the people," Annan said on arrival. Saturday's conference, to be attended by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and other lenders, along with representatives from foreign governments and corporate leaders, will focus on the long-term task of reconstruction and rehabilitation. He now expected the richer states and the private sector to contribute generously, not just for the relief operation but also for the recovery and reconstruction work in the areas devastated by the earthquake, which left at least 73,000 people dead and over 3 million homeless, according to official figures. In addition to Pakistan's registered death toll, nearly 1,400 people died in Indian-administered Kashmir. Quake survivors in the mountainous region of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Pakistani-administered Kashmir are becoming increasingly vulnerable with heavy snows and freezing weather approaching. There are also fears of disease spreading in squalid emergency tent settlements that have sprung up in what is left of the towns in the blighted region. Annan, who had warned that there could be a second wave of death unless the world woke up to the scale of the disaster, said more lives would have been saved if aid had arrived faster. The UN has so far received only $119 million and another $40 million in pledges out of $550 million it has been seeking since last month to finance emergency relief over six months. On the same day as Annan arrived, civilians crossed Pakistan's disputed frontier with India for the first time since the earthquake. More than 20 elderly men who had been visiting family in Pakistan when the quake struck, walked to the Indian side across a dry river bed under a damaged bridge at the Chakothi-Uri checkpoint. No one crossed over from the Indian side into Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. The move marked another step towards making good on a breakthrough agreement reached in October to let people from either side of Kashmir cross over at five points along the frontier to help relief efforts and allow divided families to reunite. Before today’s crossing the two sides had only exchanged relief supplies.