Aid groups appeal for swift political solution
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Your support makes all the difference.Rather than seeking more food, trucks or medicines for Afghanistan, aid workers have a made a more difficult request this weekend: a lasting political settlement for the war-ravaged country.
On the eve of the meeting near Bonn, called to seek a political solution for post-Taliban Afghanistan, humanitarian organisations say lasting stability is the most urgent requirement.
Only this, they argue, will allow up to one million refugees to return home safely, and permit aid agencies to penetrate the remote parts of the country.
Timothy Pitt, the head of Médecins Sans Frontières in Islamabad, said: "In Kabul, the emergency is not for humanitarian assistance, it is not the rebuilding of Afghanistan, it is to find a political solution."
Agencies do not so much lack food and equipment, or even the vehicles to move it, but the security within which to operate freely, they told EU leaders this weekend.
The World Food Programme says it met its target of delivering 52,000 tons of food aid in October and is on track to do the same in November. But it still has difficulty reaching remote outposts.
They reject the use of Western military help to get supplies through because most non-governmental organisations believe this would politicise the delivery of aid and make their position less secure. Instead, the aid agencies hope for a new "humanitarian space", based on a political settlement, with civilian authorities providing basic security.
On the ground, problems remain acute and NGOs outlined an array of problems when they met Romano Prodi, the European Commission president, and Guy Verhofstadt, the Prime Minister of Belgium, which holds the EU presidency, in Islamabad.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees estimates there are about 60,000 people trying to get into Pakistan and 500,000 displaced people inside Afghanistan.
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