Senior United Nations officials such as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Lee Jong-wook, Director-General World Health Organization (WHO) and Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), will go to direct the relief work in South Asian and Southeast Asian countries suffering earthquakes and tsunamis.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan will attend the special ASEAN summit on issues after the earthquake and tsunamis to be held in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia on January 6. Annan will launch appeal for emergency on the meeting and will conduct inspections of the victim areas on the relief work there.

Lee Jong-wook has arrived in the Jakarta to inspect the situation and direct the relief work there. Lee reiterated the importance of epidemic prevention after the disaster and called on all the parties concerned to vie agaist time and take all the measures to prevent the outbreak of epidemic. After the international meeting, Lee will head for Sri Lanka, another worst-hit country, to supervise the relief work there.

Bellamy was conducting inspections of Sri Lanka during the past two days. She emphasized that children are one of the focuses of the relief work. According to statistics from UNICEF, at least one third of those died in the tsunamis are children.

Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland extended praises for Asian countries such as China for their actively providing aids to the victim countries. Egeland said that China and India are the biggest donors. He has met the representatives of the two countries several times. Apart from money, the two countries also donated large amount of materials. Egeland also exalted some poverty-stricken Asian countries for their donations. He said, Nepal and East Timor participated ardently in the relief endeavors and provided victim nations substantial aids, which are unprecedented. Egeland also expressed satisfaction with the response of assistance from Gulf countries.

At the same time, UN also asked the world not to pin so high hopes on the assistance promised by rich countries because some developed countries, who have pledged over US$2 billion, seemingly generous and willing, are often just paying lip service and are not going to donate that much at all.

A spokesperson for UN Humanitarian Affairs said that people should keep prudent because every time disaster happens, developed countries always actively pledge donation, making themselves generous-looking. But whether they can actually make it is another case. Although various countries have claimed huge donations, what they will pay is likely to be far less.

Another UN staff member pointed out, developed countries will try to reduce what they are supposed to pay in all kinds of ways. For example, in assisting the delivery of relief materials in victim countries, they will dispatch troops, whose expenditure will be counted in the pledged donations. They can transfer their donation here and there but just not to the needy countries.

After the huge cyclone in Honduras and Nicaragua in 1998, which left 9, 000 dead and three million homeless, the international community pledged to donate US$5.2 billion, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank jointly US$5.2 billion, but what was actually used for the victims was even less than one third.

By People's Daily Online