Military

DATE=09/29/01

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

NUMBER=2-281161

TITLE= U-N / AFGHANISTAN (L)

BYLINE=JIM TEEPLE

DATELINE= ISLAMABAD

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: The United Nations says it had resumed limited food shipments to Afghanistan from Pakistan. V-O-A's Jim Teeple in Islamabad reports U-N officials say the security situation inside Afghanistan continues to deteriorate.

TEXT: U-N officials in Pakistan who run Afghan relief programs say their offices in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif have been attacked and ransacked, but there are no reports of injuries to local staff.

All foreign U-N staffers left Afghanistan more than two weeks ago.

Despite the tenuous security situation in Afghanistan, U-N World Food Program officials say they have started food delivery shipments to Afghanistan for the first time since the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11th. A spokesman for the W-F-P, Khaled Mansour, says 400 tons of wheat crossed the Pakistan border into Afghanistan on Saturday.

/// MANSOUR ACTUALITY ///

We are resuming food deliveries into Afghanistan on a trial basis. That's why we are starting with only a few hundred tons. But once we insure that food is reaching the most needy inside Afghanistan and that local trucks continue to be available to move the food from our warehouses in the cities into the rural areas we will move more food

into Afghanistan.

/// END ACTUALITY ///

Mr. Mansour says pre-famine conditions already exist in many parts of Afghanistan. He says the crisis could get much worse if Afghans are disrupted from planting next year's crops in the coming weeks.

U-N refugee officials warn that food shortages and any coming military conflict in Afghanistan could send more than one-million Afghans fleeing towards the borders of neighboring states like Pakistan. A spokesman for the U-N refugee agency, Peter Kessler, says Afghanistan is in a precarious situation.

/// KESSLER ACTUALITY ///

The potential for a catastrophic refugee movement is there. The needs in Afghanistan are huge. The fear and the insecurity is very much present on the ground. And many of those people in the country in a very precarious situation could find themselves moving towards frontiers in the near future if they are not on the move already.

/// END ACTUALITY ///

Mr. Kessler says his agency has sent an emergency shipment of 44 tons of plastic sheeting that can house up to 50-thousand people to the Pakistani city of Quetta near the Afghan border. The U-N refugee agency is appealing for 268-million dollars in emergency assistance, saying more than one-million Afghan refugees could flee Afghanistan for Pakistan. (Signed)

NEB/JLT/JWH