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American Morning
America's New War: U.N. Preparing for Worst
Aired September 27, 2001 - 11:21 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: In recent days we have heard increasingly from our correspondents in Pakistan and in Afghanistan of a mounted refugee crisis. The United Nations is making plans now to feed and house roughly a million and a half Afghanistan refugees.
Panos Moumtzis is a spokesman for the U.N.'s high commissioner for refugees.
And, Sir, thank you for joining us here in Washington this morning.
And I understand, just a short time ago, you received new word of a new development in the campaign to help refugees.
PANOS MOUMTZIS, UNHCR SPOKESMAN: Absolutely. We've just decided to start an early operation, bringing extra relief supplies to Pakistan and all the neighboring countries. We will have tomorrow, the first flight leaving from Europe to Islamabad.
In the meantime, of course, we have reinforced all our emergency teams with extra relief workers on the ground, blankets, tents, food, water equipment, medical supplies, basically getting ready for the worst, getting ready to accommodate and receive up to 1 1/2 million refugees out of Afghanistan.
KING: Does the military planning, the United States building up a military, urging countries to close their borders, does that complicate your work?
MOUMTZIS: It does, because our principle is that, really, borders should remain open. If there are civilians who are fleeing outside of the country, if there are people escaping a war, human rights violations, they should be allowed to cross the border.
We have appealed to the governments of Iran, Pakistan and all the neighboring countries, asking them to make sure that the borders remain open.
On the other hand, we feel a little bit reassured because so far Pakistan and Iran have been quite cooperative with us and they have helped identify refugee sites where, should there be a crisis, we already know where these people will be directed in order to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe. KING: And take to the degree -- you still have fresh information -- inside Afghanistan. What is the situation on ground there? Any communication at all with the Taliban about trying to help people?
MOUMTZIS: Well, two days ago we lost communication with our local staff in Afghanistan. Also, all our offices were looted, attacked, and communication equipment were lost. The last thing we had was that there was a big panic inside Afghanistan, thousands of people are on the way -- cities like Kabul and Kandahar are being deserted right now.
KING: And you sense of the cooperation, how about with the Pakistani government? Are they in full cooperation with you? Any tensions there?
MOUMTZIS: The Pakistani government have been very positive, extremely cooperative, doing their best, given the circumstances.
Pakistan is a poor country. They've been hosting refugee for the last 20 years, have been extremely generous, and right now I think they're doing the best taking into consideration the internal difficulties they have within the country, and they're calling for international support of international community to help with this crisis.
We just came out with an emergency appeal asking for $268 million to deal with this crisis. A big part of that would go in Pakistan and Iran, dealing and helping these governments deal with the situation right now.
KING: Any sense at all as you prepare for this how long of a campaign, how long of operation this will be?
MOUMTZIS: That's the most difficult part of it. We are preparing an emergency humanitarian response for a military or a political or diplomatic offensive that will take place without really having any information about -- on what is going to happen. So we are preparing, really, for the worst, getting ready for worst-case scenario without having any information whatsoever on what might happen in the next hours, days or weeks.
KING: And you talk about the preparations to send in tents and food supplies. Help us, what is the most needed, and especially in terms of medical help, are you already sensing that you need medical personnel on the ground, things like that?
MOUMTZIS: We need, basically, everything. Right now the most important is to have the financial ability to purchase all the items that are needed. We need to have the camps, the site identified, I think is what we did right now. Water is crucial because we can transport aid, medical supplies, but water is very expensive and impossible. So the location of the camps were extremely important.
Then working on having the shelter in place. We've purchased over 30 thousand tents, enough to accommodate -- we think our preparedness is for up to a million people in Pakistan, 400 thousand in Iran, 50 thousand in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, making sure that in terms of medical supplies we have our relief workers on the border, so once people start arriving in larger numbers anybody who is sick, all the vulnerable, the elderly, the children would be cared and taken immediately into a safer place.
Right now, there's about between 10 and 20 thousand people that have already arrived outside the boarders within Afghanistan. The Pakistani borders open.
Yesterday we had two women who delivered two babies right at the border. Luckily, the mothers and the babies were all safe, and we took them in Pakistan, in the border.
But these are situations where we want to be ready to deal, once the large steams of people start arriving, to be able to help the most vulnerable and save lives, save the lives of the refugees as they arrive.
KING: Panos Moumtzis, quite a challenge ahead.
We thank you for sharing your thoughts today.
MOUMTZIS: Thank you.
KING: from the United Nation, office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees.
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