NATO set to join relief operations

BRUSSELS—NATO has finalized plans to send up to 1,000 troops and other staff and a handful of helicopters to quake-hit Pakistan, after the UN’s top aid official lobbied them to do more to help.
“We are finalizing arrangements on the basis of extending the airlift and doing more in Pakistan itself,” said NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, following talks with NATO ambassadors attended by UN aid chief Jan Egeland.
He declined to give details, but a NATO official said the extra help — adding to NATO planes taking aid into Pakistan — would involve a 500-strong engineering battalion as well as a variety of other staff. Poland and Spain were understood to be the main contributors to the ground elements, which would total “up to 1,000” people in all, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
He added that “a small number” — less than five — of large German helicopters had been offered, and military planners were studying how they could be transported to the country. NATO agreed earlier this month to a Pakistani request for help after the October 8 earthquake, which devastated large parts of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and left more than 51,000 dead and some 3.3 million homeless.
The mountainous terrain is proving extremely difficult to cross in a timely way and helicopters are by far the most efficient means of reaching those in need of help. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has dispatched planeloads of aid and equipment to Islamabad from an air base in Turkey, some supplied by the United Nations’ refugee agency.
The NATO chief confirmed that the extra help would involve elements of its relatively new NATO Response Force (NRF), based in Lisbon. Again, no details were immediately available. The UN aid chief, speaking after talks at NATO’s Brussels headquarters, hailed the NATO efforts.
“I had a very positive meeting with the NATO council today,” he said, referring to the North Atlantic Council (NAC), NATO’s top decision-making body. “I thanked NATO for all that has been done so far in Pakistan”.
While Egeland did not repeat a public call for NATO to do more, his spokeswoman said he did so in NATO talks. “This was the aim of the meeting,” the spokeswoman, Elisabeth Byrs,
old reporters. In Geneva Thursday the UN relief chief called on the international community to set up a “second Berlin airlift”, referring to a Western air shuttle that overcame a Soviet blockade of the western part of the German city in 1948-49.
“I don’t know how you evacuate hundreds of thousands of people from the Himalayas, but the most effective military alliance in the world should be able to know that,” he said. But on Friday UN sources said Egeland did not expect NATO to provide a Berlin-style airlift on its own.
“When he talked about the Berlin airbridge he was underlining not NATO alone but all countries and all Pakistan’s neighbours,” said one source, requesting anonymity. “They have to do more”.
At least half a million people in Pakistani Kashmir are still out of reach in the mountainous region following the 7.6 magnitude earthquake almost two weeks ago. An estimated three million people are without useable homes and in need of shelter in Pakistan, while about 67,000 people were seriously injured, according to Egeland.
Currently 60 helicopters, including a US military fleet, are operating in the region, with 20 more due to arrive, according to UN figures. NATO military chiefs have indicated that the alliance may have problems dispatching helicopters at short notice. “Helicopters have been a real problem for all of us to generate, not only for Pakistan but also in Afghanistan,” said NATO supreme commander General James Jones earlier this week.
NATO was debating a plan Friday to send up to 1,000 soldiers, including engineers, to quake-hit Pakistan, as well as medical units to set up a field hospital for the injured.
The 26 allies were also looking at providing more helicopters for the relief effort, although allied commanders have acknowledged problems finding aircraft needed to get aid high into the mountains of Kashmir and northern Pakistan.
NATO officials said the number of extra helicopters was unlikely to exceed five. However, they pointed out that individual allies have separately sent about 40 helicopters to Pakistan, with the United States taking a lead role.
NATO said it expected an agreement on the deployment of the hundreds of NATO troops on the ground in Pakistan later Friday. It also said it would expand its airlift to Pakistan with 12 flights by giant C-17 cargo planes provide by Britain and the United States.
The U.N.’s top relief coordinator Jan Egeland addressed the alliance’s policy-setting North Atlantic Council before it debated the extra aid. “NATO is planning to increase its operations further, and will work closely with the Pakistan government and the United Nations in this regard,” Egeland said in a statement after his meeting.
On Thursday, Egeland appealed to NATO to “think bold, think big” in assessing their response. He called for the creation of nonstop flights reminiscent of the U.S. and British airlift of essential supplies to West Berlin in the late 1940s when Soviet forces cut the city off from the West.
NATO military experts finalized the plan early Friday before asking for approval from the North Atlantic Council, which is made up of ambassadors from each of the allied nations. Officials said some delegations were seeking clarification from their capitals before deciding on the plan.
Central to the plans is the deployment of engineers and medics from the alliance’s elite NATO Response Force to clear roads blocked by the quake and subsequent mudslides and set up field hospitals. Spain is expected to send at least 300 military engineers and Poland 140. Additional units are expected to come from Italy and Lithuania.
NATO’s European command in southern Belgium held emergency talks with military commanders from the allied nations Thursday in an attempt to muster more helicopters, which the Pakistani government says are desperately needed to get aid to remote mountain areas. So far, NATO has used just two German helicopters send from a base in Uzbekistan.
Officials declined to say how many more choppers had been offered. On Wednesday, allied commanders acknowledged difficulties in mustering the necessary helicopters.
NATO is running an airlift of aid to Pakistan out of bases in Germany and Turkey. The operation out of Turkey is NATO’s biggest ever joint airlift with the U.N. refugee agency. In aims to ferry some 860 metric tons (950 U.S. tons) of UNHCR supplies to Pakistan over 10-15 days.
So far the operation has moved more than 60 metric tons (65 U.S. tons) of tents, blankets and other items from Turkey to Pakistan, UNCHR said.
Another five NATO flights by French, British, Greek and Turkish cargo planes were scheduled to leave from Turkey’s Incirlik air base Friday.—Agencies