Associated Press
November 11
he first shipment of U.N. humanitarian aid from Uzbekistan will be sent by barge
across the Amu Darya River into Afghanistan on Wednesday, a U.N. official said Sunday.
It comes less than a week after Afghanistan's opposition northern alliance drove Taliban forces out of Mazar-e-Sharif, the main city near the Uzbek border in northern Afghanistan.
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However, the aid will be sent by barge because the only bridge across the Amu Darya on the Uzbek-Afghan border has not been reopened. It was closed in 1997 after the Taliban took control of most of Afghanistan. They seized Mazar-e-Sharif in 1998. If the initial barge crossing is successful, officials plan to send 16,000 tons of aid intended for Afghan children every month, U.N. representative Richard Conroy said at a news conference in Termez, on the Uzbek side of the border 45 miles north of Mazar-e-Sharif. |
Uzbekistan and the United Nations agreed last month on passage of humanitarian aid through the Central Asian nation, a key member of the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism. Uzbekistan has allowed the United States to use air bases for humanitarian and search-and-rescue missions.
The United Nations has sent tons of humanitarian aid for Afghanistan - food, medicine and medical supplies - to Uzbekistan for delivery to Afghanistan. The aid has been stockpiled in Termez, waiting for Uzbek barges to start deliveries.
Conroy and two Uzbek government officials inspected the barges Sunday and said they were ready to go. Conroy said if the river crossings work out well, officials may begin allowing journalists to cross in to Afghanistan on the barges. The entire border is now closed.
Conroy and Uzbek officials did not say whether the bridge would be opened. Uzbek border guards said last week that the bridge could be if the Taliban were forced out of Mazar-e-Sharif, which fell to the opposition on Friday.
In Washington, the State Department said Saturday that shipments of aid from Uzbekistan to northern Afghanistan would begin and that ``the fact that this process can now get under way is a direct result of the changing security situation on the Uzbekistan-Afghanistan border.''
When Uzbekistan agreed last month to open ports along the river so that humanitarian aid could be ferried across to Afghanistan, U.N. officials had said shipments might begin before the battle for Mazar-e-Sharif was over.