UN's aid chief tours Beirut

Jan Egeland, the UN's Emergency Relief Coordinator, is in Lebanon pushing for a safe humanitarian corridor for aid workers to deliver urgently needed supplies. However, so far Israel is reported to have rejected the idea. Jaime McGoldrick, Beirut spokesman for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said Egeland's 48 hour visit to Lebanon would focus on assistance needed for people displaced or trapped by the conflict. He said Egeland was to "survey sites that have been identified as part of the proposed humanitarian corridors for the international relief effort in Lebanon." UN relief agencies want parties to the conflict to agree to a humanitarian corridor to allow the safe delivery of more aid by more relief organisations. "It is important to have a humanitarian corridor in order to get supplies to the affected, and [get them there] faster than other means," Hicham Hassan, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross,(ICRC) told IRIN on Sunday. "[But] the question remains whether this will open a gateway to the south." The ICRC is in a unique position, as it is able to secure temporary safe passage to deliver aid in conflict because it routinely maintains contact with both sides. On Friday, it sent a relief convoy to the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, negotiating safe passage for it. But most relief organisations need a diplomatic longstanding agreement on a humanitarian corridor, before they can safely move supplies and personnel by road inside Lebanon. The ICRC's Hassan said some Lebanese relief organisations stationed in affected areas are providing assistance. "It's helping," he said, "but it's small scale, not enough." The World Health Organization says some 600,000 people have been displaced inside Lebanon, most from the south of the country, and that because of ongoing conflict between Israeli forces and Lebanese Hizbullah militants, aid agencies expect this number to rise. On Sunday, Egeland toured a Beirut suburb hit by an Israeli air strike, saying the strike seemed to be "an excessive use of force" and as such "a violation of humanitarian law". Egeland also met Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Saniora. UN relief agencies say Lebanon faces a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions. "Military operations have left people displaced, besieged and isolated from essential services and goods," the UN said. "With each passing day, national stocks of food, fuel, some medicine and other essential items are depleting and market prices for these goods are skyrocketing, putting them beyond the reach of the average citizen". The UN is launching an international flash appeal on Monday for funds it says it needs to respond to the crisis. “Time is of the essence,” a UN statement concerning the appeal read. "We already have good medical stocks here, but our concern is not to rely on those, but on more stocks arriving as more people will be needing assistance,” OCHA's McGoldrick told IRIN from Beirut. A small OCHA team from Geneva has already arrived in Lebanon. Egeland is also due to visit Israel and the occupied Palestine territories next. MC/SZ/ED/CB