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Security plea for huge aid effort
KUWAIT CITY, Kuwait -- Aid agencies want U.S. and British troops to provide security for "the world's biggest humanitarian operation" -- the distribution of food and essential supplies to millions of Iraqis. World Food Programme spokeswoman Antonia Paradela told CNN Thursday the law and order situation in Iraq, particularly in the center and south, had disintegrated with no respect for personal property. CNN's Christiane Amanpour reported that widespread lawlessness and looting in Baghdad and Basra had seriously hampered aid efforts -- with military commanders saying they did not have enough troops for policing efforts. Paradela said: "We would like to see the situation stabilize and we would like to see troops fulfilling their responsibilities under the Geneva Convention. That means to provide law and order and respect for public property and private property." It did not mean being escorted by the military, she said. "We do not want that, it is not really a good option and besides the operation we are running is absolutely massive," she said. What was needed, she said, was security on the ground at city and town level for when food was taken to the warehouses and distributed to 44,000 food and flour agents to give rations to the Iraqi people. "We want safety all along the way," she said. Oxfam spokesman Alex Renton told CNN: "Things are looking very grim with the outbreak of collapse of law and order in many cities across the country. Perhaps we should have forseen this. "What we have to look at now is whether this can be brought under control really very swiftly so that the confidence of the Iraqi people can be regained and before too much damage is done to the structure -- just look at Baghdad today where every single U.N. office was looted -- to stop us getting back in to start to reconstruct." He said Oxfam had a truck and a convoy going in Thursday night to try to restock looted hospitals, but it was just "Band-aid -- bits and pieces work." "We need perhaps the military to admit that they are not doing the job very well at all and we need them to provide security, we need them to restore law and order," he said. He said aid agencies needed a buffer between military operations and aid distribution, which was safer for everyone with suicide bombings taking place. But Oxfam could see itself working under a framework of military security, which was "crucial," he said. "We need that umbrella of control." he said. WFP's Paradela said the Iraqis had enough food until May, but then it would run out. "We urgently need to start working soon. We need to feed the whole Iraqi population from May onwards, 27 million people" she said. "It's going to be the largest humanitarian operation ever." "We should be able to be working inside Iraq soon to assess the situation, set up everything and make sure every Iraqi family gets their ration when it is due. "It is a massive operation. We need hundreds of thousands of tons of food and need more than 9,000 trucks and vans," she said. "If there is no security on the ground, I don't know how we are going to be able to do our work properly." Food is in the region and would be coming through in the next two weeks, she said. Paradela said the WFP also needed funds. It has launched an appeal for $1.3 billion, the largest appeal in its history, but so far only a quarter of that has been raised. Another WFP spokesman, Maarten Roest, said the program had tried to provide food sufficient for the entire Iraqi population for four months. "We need to operate in a safe environment in order to deliver food successfully," he said. "Unless law and order prevail, it would be extremely difficult to guarantee the required food aid -- 480,000 tons -- reach the people." He referred to the reported looting of warehouses in Basra that WFP wants to replenish for its May distribution, saying WFP operations did not seem possible if lawlessness continues. Paradela said food convoys were getting through in areas of northern Iraq which had not been massively affected by the conflict.
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