World quake aid pledges inadequate: President
Says re-building to cost $5b
DM Monitoring

MUZAFFARABAD—President Pervez Musharraf has lashed out at the world for pledging “inadequate” reconstruction aid after the massive South Asian quake, as the death toll climbed above 51,000.
But a day after the United Nations also begged other countries to wake up and prevent a second wave of deaths, Turkey stepped in with the biggest donation so far as the magnitude of the disaster began finally to sink in.
Two weeks after the disaster, thousands of survivors in the Himalayan foothills were still cold and hungry while more than three million people face a bitter winter without proper homes. Musharraf was quoted by the BBC as saying that the international community’s reconstruction pledges of around 620 million dollars were “totally inadequate” to meet the estimated five-billion-dollar cost of rebuilding.
Military spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan, told the President was only referring to the reconstruction aid, not the initial appeal for relief and rescue teams to reach victims cut off in the mountains.
“It is reconstruction where the pledges are highly inadequate because reconstruction would require billions of dollars... for houses, infrastructure, hospitals, schools, colleges and police stations, roads and bridges,” Sultan said.
The United Nations’ relief chief Jan Egeland extracted a pledge from NATO Friday to bolster its help for victims, a day after calling for a mass air evacuation of stricken survivors, although he gave no details.
“NATO is planning to increase its operations further and will work more closely with the Pakistani government and the United Nations in their operations,” he added, quoted by his spokeswoman.
A UN-backed donors meeting on October 26 in Geneva will discuss the problem, while UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has made a strongly worded appeal for more aid.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered 100 million dollars in cash and 50 million dollars in aid to the fellow Muslim nation — the most by any country so far — during a flying visit to the quake zone.
“We have to fulfil our humanitarian duties from the short term to the long term, from infrastructure to housing,” Erdogan told reporters in Pakistani Kashmir’s ravaged capital Muzaffarabad. NATO was also taking part in the relief operation, starting flights from its base in Incirlik, Turkey to Pakistan that will bring in some 900 tons of humanitarian aid from the UN refugee agency.
Choppers from the United States, Germany and other countries once again took to the skies above Muzaffarabad, the devastated capital of Pakistani Kashmir, the ruined northern town of Balakot and other stricken areas.
Rescuers are struggling not only to get tents and supplies to people in cut-off areas but also to evacuate thousands of people with life-threatening injuries and wounds that are turning gangrenous.
Pakistan’s health ministry said that five people had died from tetanus following the quake and 42 other cases were being treated. A massive vaccination campaign is under way. Meanwhile Pakistan’s top disaster response official said the chances are dimming that India and Pakistan will reopen their disputed Kashmir border in the wake of the earthquake tragedy. “My concern is that time is running out. If there are long parleys on the modalities then the window is closing,” Major General Farooq Ahmad Khan told reporters when asked about the proposal.
Musharraf offered Tuesday to throw open the Line of Control, which has split the Himalayan territory since 1949, to let families help one another after the quake. India, which has fought Pakistan in two wars over Kashmir since 1947, welcomed the proposal but said it was awaiting details. New Delhi later said Islamabad had not made any concrete proposal.