World must deliver on aid vows, says Annan

Annan’s appeal, delivered at an emergency international aid summit in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, followed an assessment by the World Health Organisation that survivors could succumb to cholera and dysentery unless they received clean water and other basic services by the end of the week.

At the one-day summit, world leaders welcomed debt relief for countries hit by the Dec. 26 disaster and backed the creation of an Indian Ocean early tsunami warning system which could save lives in the future.

Annan appealed at the summit for $977 million to cover basic humanitarian needs for an estimated 5 million people in the next six months. “What happened on 26 December, 2004, was an unprecedented global catastrophe. It requires an unprecedented global response … It is a race against time,”he said.

Much of the aid will flow to Indonesia, whose northern Aceh province suffered almost two-thirds of those killed on Dec. 26. Shopkeepers and restaurant owners in the devastated capital Banda Aceh reopened for business on Thursday, despite fresh aftershocks that interrupted the daily hunt by survivors for clean water and food.

The International Monetary Fund stands ready with $1 billion in loans for countries devastated by the Asian tsunami disaster, the head of the global lender said on Wednesday. Rodrigo Rato, arriving in Jakarta for an international tsunami relief summit, said the financial needs of the countries still had to be assessed and loans could be made available under an existing IMF facility for countries hurt by natural disasters.

Meanwhile, IMF officials revealed that Sri Lanka had requested a rescheduling of its IMF debt, which will delay its repayments to the fund.

The matter is expected to be discussed by the IMF’s board of shareholder governments in early January.

In the declaration at the end of the Jakarta summit, the delegates of 26 nations and groups also called for stronger coordination of relief efforts and asked the United Nations ‘‘to convene an international pledging conference for the sustainability of humanitarian relief efforts’’.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Japan, with its ‘‘countless experiences’’ with earthquakes and tsunamis, was willing to freeze debt payments for affected countries and called on others to do the same.

In Edinburgh, British Finance minister Gordon Brown said the Group of Seven rich industrial countries and the Paris Club of creditor nations must stand ready to consider all options for helping the countries hit by the tsunami. —Reuters