With aid still trickling in despite repeated appeals to the international community, United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG) Ban Ki-moon on Sunday urged the world to “speed up assistance to the Pakistani people'' as the nation tries to remain afloat in the country-wide floods.
Mr. Ban issued the fresh appeal from Pakistani soil during a day's visit to assess the situation for himself and thereafter report back to the General Assembly on Thursday on the crisis facing Pakistan. He held separate meetings with President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani.
Mr. Ban made an aerial survey of some of the affected areas along with Mr. Zardari after which he said the world should stand united behind Pakistan in this hour of trial while reminding the international community of Pakistan's contributions to the world especially through the United Nations Peace Keeping Force.
Though the Secretary-General was confident that the resilience of the Pakistani people would help them deal with this unfolding crisis, the President maintained that Pakistan would not be able to deal with the widespread devastation on its own. Urging the media to understand the scale of the crisis, Mr. Zardari said Pakistan had asked China to drop food for about 40,000 people stranded in the mountains as those areas were inaccessible from this side of the border.
In fact, the Prime Minister in his Independence Day address to the nation on Saturday compared the flood situation to the crisis faced by Pakistan immediately after Partition. He informed Mr. Ban about the decision to set up an independent commission with people of unquestionable integrity to ensure fair and transparent disbursement of assistance to the affected people.
Noting that the second and third waves of flooding may prove more dangerous for the already affected areas, Mr. Gilani asked for more helicopters, boats and hovercrafts on an urgent basis. For his part, Mr. Zardari sought to impress upon the visiting U.N. delegation the crippling blow dealt by the floods on Pakistan's economy which had begun to show some signs of revival after the adverse effect of the global war on terror.
Mr. Ban told the Pakistani leadership that he would try to mobilise the international community through a special plenary session of the U. N. for the flood affected, the Friends of Democratic Pakistan meeting in Brussels in October and the forthcoming annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Though U.N. agencies have been on the ground trying to provide immediate assistance to the flood-affected from early days of the flood, Mr. Ban's visit was aimed at highlighting the urgency of the situation and speaking to the world from Pakistan.
