WFP prepares huge food input from Iran

The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) plans to send 100,000 mt of food, mainly US wheat, into Afghanistan through Iran in a period of forty days, an agency official confirmed to IRIN on Wednesday. "The amount is almost double that of our monthly target of 52,000 mt per month, but it is possible," Marius de Gaay Fortman, WFP country representative in the Iranian capital, Tehran said.

"At this point in time we have all of our transporters working for us, making it possible to get this aid into the country in that time frame," he added. The operation would be the largest supply of aid to be sent from Iran to Afghanistan in such a short space of time.

WFP in Iran was now managing to send a daily average of 2,500 mt of food aid to Afghanistan. Based on this calculation it would take roughly one month and 10 days if access routes remained opened, he said.

Some 65,000 mt of food arrived in Iran at the ports of Bandar-e Abbas in The Gulf and Chahbahar in the Gulf of Oman in November. The shipment was intended for distribution in western and northern Afghanistan, where some three million people are in need of food aid, according to the food agency. "The rural areas in southwestern Afghanistan are of particular concern to us," De Gaay Fortman said. The UN estimates there to be six million people in the war-torn country in need of food assistance.

Included in the 100,000 mt of food aid is 17,000 mt of grain and 1,300 mt of oil, 750 mt of chick peas and the same amount of lentils that WFP is buying from Iran. A further 10,000 mt of mixed pulses and other commodities would arrive at Bandar-e Abbas by mid-December. De Gaay Fortman said WFP operations were running according to plan. "So far it is going well. We had a difficult period in October and November but we seem to be overcoming that," he noted.

Asked if this was a significant move for the Iranians to allow US wheat into their country, despite poor diplomatic relations between the two governments, he said, "the Iranians are straightforward people, their main concern is humanitarian and their second concern is that the food aid does not affect agricultural production in Iran," he stressed. "The US wheat is free of a fungus called Karnal Bunt, which affects seed, Iran has been free of this fungus and doesn't want infected grain to be brought into the country," he explained.