Brussels, 09/10/2001 (Agence Europe) - The President of the European Council, Guy Verhofstadt, the President of the Commission, Romano Prodi, and the Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid, Poul Nielson, were pleased with the outcome of their meeting on Monday evening on co-ordinating Community and Member States' forces to cope with the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. Calling for the three-way budgetary negotiations (Council/Parliament/Commission) to be brought forward, the Presidency responded to the Commission's desire to see the procedures speeded up to immediately release an extra EUR 25 million from the Community reserve. Hot on the heels of this, the provision of EUR 25 million was also requested for immediate aid for Chechens and Palestinians since ECHO's budget (the European Community Humanitarian Office) is not big enough to cope with these concurrent crises. The Commission's spokesperson for the budget, Michaele Schreyer, said that the Commission's proposal for the Budgetary Authority (required in order to make a transfer from the budget reserve to an operational budget - ECHO in this case) would be issued in the next few days (as quickly as happened in October 2000 for Serbia).
At a press conference, Guy Verhofstadt said that their objective was to examine the EU's aid options and ensure aid is supplied as soon as possible. EUR 315 million has already been committed for 2001, EUR 215 million from Member States and EUR 100 million from the Commission. He added that the aid would be targeted on countries bordering on Afghanistan and they would ensure all the necessary logistics were provided to make it operational. The Union's objective, he explained, is to ensure that Tajikistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Pakistan do not have to bear any costs connected with refugees. The Union hoped that the refugee camps would be temporary. Romano Prodi said that the money battle had been won and it was now a case of getting the aid to the region with the co-operation of Afghanistan's neighbours. He said that they had provided the fullest answer to Kofi Anan's question and were prepared. Now it would be necessary to mobilise NGOs, United Nations' agencies and the ICRC to work in the field. Poul Nielson pointed out that for years ECHO has been a constant presence in Pakistan constituting, before 11 September, a base point for organising international aid in Afghanistan, and now had an impressive number of representatives of humanitarian organisations well versed in working with local people. He stressed that this was an advantage, adding that the best way to help Afghans was to provide aid on convoys of lorries, as the EU has already done for Kabul. Estimates converge on an expected 1.5 million refugees, but few have yet managed to cross the borders, commented Mr Nielson. This, he said, explains the reasoning behind carrying out cross-border operations as envisaged by the Red Cross International Committee, ensuring that local populations take over to ensure that aid gets to the people it is aimed at. He added that the decision had been prepared for mobilising an emergency budget and that they now needed the Parliament and Council's participation to cover any risk of running out of resources, saying that the Presidency of the Council should be applauded for its active role in speeding up the procedures.
Confident of rapidly getting the go-ahead from Parliament and Council for the EUR 25 million it has requested from the budget reserve, the Commission decided on Tuesday to immediately release an additional EUR 1.5 million from ECHO's budget (to be reimbursed once the three-way decision has been taken) for medical aid to Afghans who are the victims of military strikes.