Severe financial crunch curbs aid to civilians

The United Nations is facing a financial shortfall that may severely hamper its efforts to aid millions of Iraqi civilians in the event of a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, according to UN officials and internal UN documents.

Secretary General Kofi Annan held a closed-door session of the Security Council Thursday to raise awareness of the humanitarian fallout of a war and to appeal to governments to boost financial contributions for the UN humanitarian relief efforts.

Louise Frechette, the deputy UN secretary-general, warned the council at the briefing that the UN agencies were running short of money and that they would have to raise $90 million over the coming weeks.

"We have to recognise that conflict might occur and might cause terrible loss and suffering to the Iraqi people," Kenzo Oshima, the UN's chief emergency relief coordinator, told reporters afterward. "We need to take prudent preparatory methods to address the potential humanitarian impact of a conflict."

Oshima presented reporters with the United Nations' most detailed public sketch of the possible consequences of a war, noting that 600,000 to 1.45 million refugees and asylum seekers may flee Iraq, while up to 2 million people could be left homeless inside the country. He said that as many as 10 million people will require food assistance immediately following a conflict.

Oshima said the United Nations assumes that a U.S. military campaign will cause fuel and power shortages in Baghdad and other cities and shut down water and sanitation.

"It is assumed that conflict would severely disrupt critical infrastructure and the government's capacity to deliver basic services and relief," he said. "Approximately 50 percent of the population may be without access to water."

Oshima said the UN humanitarian agencies have been borrowing money from other humanitarian operations and dipping into a general U.N emergency fund that's been largely depleted.

Oshima said the World Food Program, which had planned to preposition 10 weeks of food for 900,000 people near Iraq by now, has distributed only enough for 250,000. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has supplied winter kits and shelter for 118,000 people, far short of an initial target of 600,000.

A confidential UN report of a Jan. 30 meeting between several UN agencies and Richard Greene, the deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, indicated that the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees was having trouble making ends meet.

The United Nations' refugee agency, whose preparations have been almost entirely financed from emergency funds, has borrowed $10 million from other refugee programs, and taken a $6 million loan from the UN Central Revolving Fund, whose emergency funds are now exhausted.

Governments that oppose military action, including France, Germany and Russia, have refused to fund the humanitarian contingency plans because of concerns that it would signal that the United Nations had given up on the prospects for a diplomatic settlement.

The United States, which has pledged half of the $30 million the United Nations has already received for contingency planning, said that it would encourage other donors to pitch in.