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US blocks relief in northern Iraq

UN arms inspectors must return to verify any WMD, says EU external affairs commissioner

STAR DESK
The United Nations and international aid agencies accused the US military of deliberately hindering the relief programme by stopping relief flights from coming into northern Iraq.
The UN has 30 workers stuck in Larnaca, Cyprus, after failing to get security clearance from US military authorities for their own planned flight. Veronique Taveua, spokeswoman for the UN Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, said the delay meant the organisation could not oversee food, water, health care and demining programmes in the region.
She added: "This is slowing down the delivery of humanitarian aid. It's too long a process to return to an area where direct conflict did not occur."
Meanwhile, the first emergency
shipment of food reached Baghdad yesterday, as the UN significantly increases the scale of its aid to Iraq in an effort to avert an impending humanitarian disaster.
Rob MacGillivray, emergency programme manager of Save The Children, said: "The doctors we are trying to help in Mosul have been
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struggling against the odds for weeks to continue saving lives, but now the help we have promised them is being endlessly delayed."
Save the Children said it had been trying to land a plane in Arbil in northern Iraq with medical supplies to treat 40,000 people and emergency supplies for malnourished children.
Humanitarian agencies warned the situation is critical. The World Health Organisation said the main hospitals in Mosul had been looted and were operating at about 50 per cent of capacity.
Khaled Mansour, a WFP spokesman, said: "Time is running out for the 60 per cent of the Iraqi people who are entirely dependent on food handouts, and our goal is to restore the system by the beginning of May."
The Red Cross reported that while Baghdad continued to be a serious problem, it was gaining improved access to hospitals in the south and centre of the country, including the cities of Basra, Umm Qasr, Nasiriyah and Zubayr.
"There are 10 main hospitals in Baghdad and most of them were totally ruined," said a Red Cross spokeswoman, Tamara al-Rifai.
In the north, a US military spokesman insisted that while the area around Arbil was safe for military planes, which could defend themselves, civilian planes might be in danger.
DEBATE OVER UN ROLE
The European Union foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, took a swipe at the United States in a newspaper interview, saying it should use its clout to form consensus among its allies rather than impose its will by force. He renewed calls for a major UN role in Iraq.
The United States resents the UN Security Council's refusal to support its invasion of Iraq.
The United States has promised to pull out its troops and hand over control to an Iraqi government when it considers a US-led interim administration has completed its job.
UN INSPECTORS
The EU believes UN arms inspectors must return to Iraq to verify any weapons of mass destruction found by allied forces, EU external affairs commissioner Chris Patten said in Sydney yesterday.
Patten also supported a plea by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan for a fresh Security Council mandate for the UN to play a role in post-war Iraq, including adequate resources to do its job.
"In my view there's no question that having as much international legitimacy for a post-conflict situation as possible makes sense in everybody's interest," said Patten, who arrived in Australia last week for EU-Australia ministerial talks.
He told commercial television in an interview screened Sunday that there should be as wide as possible belief in the reports of inspectors as possible.
"Obviously it must be a worry that if things are simply found by the coalition which has been fighting the war, people in Arab countries, the Islamic world, will be less inclined to believe it than if it was done by the UN.
"So I think there's an interest for everyone in getting the UN back at some stage to verify anything that's discovered."
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said he agreed with Patten on the need for UN arms verification.
He said there were some issues to be sorted out by the UN Security Council before the arms inspectors could return to Iraq.
EASTER SUNDAY, KARBALA PILGRIMAGE
Iraqi Christians observed a sombre Easter Sunday, praying for an end to postwar chaos and uncertainty.
While Christians prayed, tens of thousands of Shi'ite Muslims, Iraq's majority population, beat their chests as they streamed toward the holy central city of Karbala, in a pilgrimage banned by Saddam Hussein for nearly a quarter of a century.
Dozens of tents were set up along the 50-mile route where Shi'ite groups scooped up water from oil drums and handed it to pilgrims to sustain them on their tough walk. The pilgrimage reaches its climax on Wednesday.