Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the minister of state for foreign affairs and chairman of the UAE Red Crescent Society, said Monday that the RCS would sponsor 40,000 Afghan refugees and provide them with food, shelter and healthcare.
In a statement to the official Emirati news agency (WAM), cited by the Khalkeej Times on Tuesday, the minister said that the society would carry out projects to shelter refugees, and build a field hospital to provide comprehensive medical services and distribute food.
He said that the society had started a campaign to raise funds to aid Afghan refugees, and appealed to UAE citizens and residents to donate.
An RCS delegation has arrived in Pakistan and started its mission immediately in the eastern province of Peshawar on the Afghan border, said the paper.
The UAE last week cut diplomatic links with Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia for refusing to hand over the main suspect in the September 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden.
Saudi Arabia's King Fahd has pledged $10 million in humanitarian aid to help Afghan refugees in the event of a US military strike on Afghanistan, the official SPA agency reported Monday.
It said the Saudi assistance, mainly of food, medicines and clothes, was aimed at "easing the suffering of the brother Afghan people and helping the Afghan refugees."
The United Nations has called on member states to come up with $584 million to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in the country.
The money would go to help some 7.5 million Afghans whose circumstances have worsened since the September 11 attacks.
The planned US retaliation has forced the United Nations to break off almost all its operations in Afghanistan - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
