UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to attend Islamabad donor conference

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan is due to arrive in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, for a three-day visit on Thursday to attend a donors’ conference convened to bolster resources for rehabilitation of quake-devastated areas of Pakistan. At least 87,000 people killed and over 100,000 were injured when the massive quake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale ripped though northern parts of the South Asian state on 8 October. Over 3 million people were rendered homeless in the disaster, with survivors now facing a harsh Himalayan winter as temperatures drop below zero in some places. During his three-day visit Annan, accompanied by his wife, is scheduled to hold talks with Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. Musharraf has appealed to the international community to contribute generously at the weekend conference to raise funds to help rebuild Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Pakistan-administered Kashmir - the two most affected areas. “Pakistan needed ‘generous assistance’ both in cash and kind. We will welcome assistance in kind such as sponsorship of houses, schools, hospitals or even villages,” Musharraf reportedly said ahead of the conference. Meanwhile, the UN Secretary-General is scheduled to visit quake-devastated Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, to see first hand the relief operations undertaken by the United Nations, NGOs and international organisations in support of the efforts of the government and military of Pakistan. For over five weeks, Annan has been personally involved in coordinating the relief operations, starting from sending off the Humanitarian Coordinator, Jan Egeland, to Pakistan to assess the situation and afterwards, attend a ministerial-level conference in Geneva on 26 October. During the Geneva conference, the UN revised its Flash Appeal for relief operations from about US $320 million to nearly $550 million for the next six months - an amount that has yet to be delivered despite the magnitude of the disaster. Earlier this week, the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution tabled by Pakistan calling on the world body to mobilise the international community to address the medium- and long-term reconstruction needs of the areas affected by the October quake. The resolution entitled ‘Strengthening Emergency Relief, Rehabilitation, Reconstruction and Prevention in the Aftermath of South Asia Earthquake Disaster’ was co-sponsored by 133 countries from all regions and continents. The General Assembly also requested the UN Secretary-General to appoint a special envoy in order to sustain the political will of the international community to support recovery efforts. The United Nations, together with Pakistani government, on Wednesday has come up with a detailed ‘Early Recovery’ framework to assist the interim recovery efforts over the next 12 to 18 months before the reconstruction starts. "The UN is operating lifesaving and recovery efforts at the same time,” said the UN Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator in Pakistan, Jan Vandemoortele, in Islamabad. "Under this plan we will work to bridge the phase from relief to reconstruction by shifting from saving lives to restoring livelihoods," the senior UN official explained. According to the early recovery framework nearly $400 million is needed to assist communities from nine of the worst quake-affected districts of NWFP and Pakistani-administered Kashmir in 10 major sectors; shelter, employment/livelihoods and agriculture, governance, environment, education, protection, food and nutrition, health, water and sanitation. However, the country needs about $5.2 billion to effectively implement a relief, recovery and reconstruction strategy over next five to 10 years, according to a preliminary damage and needs assessment done by two major multilateral financial institutions - the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank. Meanwhile, international donors have also called upon Islamabad to formulate a "corruption mitigation strategy" to win much-needed international trust and the speedy transfer of foreign donations for post-earthquake reconstruction, the country’s leading English-language daily Dawn reported on Wednesday. According to Pakistani finance ministry officials, the country has received some $9.5 million in cash against the pledges of over $2 billion. “We have asked the president and the prime minister to minimise fiduciary risks to gain maximum international trust for converting commitments of $2.5 billion aid into a reality and get maximum funding pledges at the donors’ conference on November 19,” the English-language Dawn quoted the country representative of a multilateral agency as saying. The donors have also emphasised the audit of reconstruction activities of the military should be undertaken by the central auditing agency, Auditor General of Pakistan, as the regular budget audit instead of the separate military audit. To this, Pakistani President Musharraf on Tuesday reiterated in a meeting with Islamabad-based envoys that financial assistance would be utilised in the most "transparent manner" and all accounts would be accounted for through audit.