KABUL, June 26 (Xinhuanet) -- James T. Morris, executive
director of the United Nations World Food Program, urged donor countries
Wednesday to provide more food to Afghanistan to ensure that urgently needed
reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts can continue in the country.
"Afghanistan still needs a lot of support from the
international community," said Morris, who is on his first official visit to
Afghanistan since he became WFP executive director in April. "The donor
countries helped WFP prevent afamine in the past winter, and now their support
has to be sustained if we are to avoid a crisis in the coming winter."
The largest U.N. food aid agency still faces a staggering
shortage of 175,000 tons of food worth approximately 102 million U.S. dollars,
he told reporters in a press conference here. "WFP had to cut down
on various programs over the past two months to cope with this shortage,
focusing its limited resources mainly on the most vulnerable drought-affected
population," hesaid.
"Unless we get additional cash immediately, we could
seemalnutrition with the risk of starvation rising especially in thehighlands,"
the WFP chief added.
WFP started on April 1 a nine-month operation whose focus is to
gradually shift from relief to recovery with particular emphasison education,
health and the agricultural sector after July.
It is estimated a total of 544,000 tons of food will berequired
for this operation.
Meanwhile, WFP has been working with the Afghan government to
rehabilitate irrigation system and reconstruct schools, hospitals,roads and
bridges, but some of the projects conducted through food-for-work schemes had to
be suspended due to funding shortages.
About one million refugees returning from neighboring
countrieshave also benefited from WFP food support over the past few months,but
due to funding shortages, WFP had to cut down the food packageto the returning
families to one third of the original ration.
WFP's school feeding projects, launched in late March to coverup
to one million school children, could also be threatened in theabsence of
additional donor support, said Morris, who willconclude his two-day visit to the
war-torn country after touringMazar-I-Sharif and Bamyan Thursday.
"Humanitarian assistance to support both emergency and recovery
must continue. Now is time to make a firm commitment to the futureof
Afghanistan," he said.
On the security issue of U.N. aid workers in northern provinces,
Morris told reporters that higher officials of the Afghan transitional
government had promised strict measures would be taken to ensure the
personal safety for the humanitarian workers. Enditem
by Wen Xinnian, Yu Fei
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