Nations Meet to Discuss War Aid

Major countries, with the United States notably absent, met Saturday in Switzerland with representatives of aid agencies and Iraq’s neighbors to prepare for the relief work that will be needed if there is a war.

Neutral Switzerland invited 30 countries to take part in the closed-door meeting here.

Four of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members -- Britain, France, Russia and China -- are attending the two-day conference, which ends today. The fifth member, the U.S., refused to attend, saying U.N. agencies have already made extensive preparations.

Aid officials, however, noted that it was the first time Iraq’s neighbors had met with relief agencies and wealthy donor countries to discuss what to do if war breaks out.

“It’s certainly useful to have a lot of the players in the humanitarian situation together, completely outside the political environment, particularly the countries who would face a first wave of refugees,” said Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey warned that a humanitarian crisis is almost certain if war is launched.

“The situation in Iraq is difficult. The sanitary infrastructures and supplies of drinking water are already insufficient,” she said. “The resistance of the Iraqi people is very low and the risk of a massive humanitarian crisis correspondingly high.”

Shaher Bak, Jordan’s minister of state for foreign affairs, told reporters after Saturday’s session that Iraq’s neighbors would need more help than they received from the international community during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

“We don’t want a repeat of what we had to do in 1991 without any help from the international community,” he said. Jordan, which depends on Iraq for its crude oil and fuel, fears worsening economic conditions and an influx of refugees.

In 1991, Jordan accepted 1.2 million refugees from Iraq. It has said it will not accept war refugees this time, except those in transit, although aid officials said Friday that the country had agreed to set up two refugee camps on its eastern border.

Ozbek Saran, vice president of the Turkish Red Crescent Society, said his country also was readying for a massive influx. “Right now our capacity would be 80,000, but of course in 1991 we had about 500,000. We have taken necessary measures to cope with 200,000, or maybe more,” he said.

Iraq was not invited to the conference because Swiss officials said they wanted to avoid turning it into a political event.

France was wary and sent only an observer who would not speak during the meeting, said Stephane Schorderet, a spokesman for the country’s mission to the U.N. offices in Geneva. The country is fiercely opposed to an attack on Iraq.

“This meeting is basically about putting ourselves in a situation where we assume there’s already a war,” Schorderet said. “We don’t think it’s the moment to discuss the consequences, because for the moment there is no war.”

The Geneva conference follows a separate Security Council meeting Thursday on the humanitarian consequences of a war. The United Nations says a war could create up to 1.5 million refugees. Food supplies in Iraq could run out within six weeks of the start of a conflict, and drinking water supplies could be cut or polluted, aid officials say.

The U.N. has appealed for more than $100 million since December to get food and other humanitarian supplies in place in case of war. The U.S. and Britain already have contributed $15 million, and Washington has pledged an additional $40 million.

The U.S. has been coordinating its plans for feeding and caring for civilians with the office of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for months, but details have not been made public.

The U.S. military plans to handle initial humanitarian relief efforts if a U.S.-led force enters Iraq. It would gradually hand over responsibilities to international aid groups, U.N. and U.S. officials said.

The U.S. is storing millions of dollars of food and medical supplies in warehouses in Italy and Kuwait, where it plans to establish a large humanitarian aid coordination center near the Iraqi border, the officials said.