Rome (Fides Service) - "Priority number one in Iraq is to restore a minimum of public order. Only then can humanitarian organisations operate in conditions of security", Laura Boldini spokesperson for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees UNHCR who has just returned to Rome from Middle East tells Fides Service. "The situation of chaos with looting and sacking which does not even spare the UN offices, prevents the distribution of aid which is ready on the borders. Order must be restored immediately otherwise there is a danger of creating an ungovernable situation from which it will be difficult to exit. Acts of revenge and retaliation which could trigger a civil war must be avoided at all costs. This task must be carried out in a way that respects the independence autonomy and neutrality of the work of humanitarian organisations, and this is impossible when an occupying force operates in the country" says the UNHCR spokesperson.
"At the humanitarian level the sanitary emergency is the most important. Iraq has good hospitals and doctors but there are no medicines, water or electricity".
With regard to assisting refugees Laura Boldrini says: "We were ready to assist as many as 350,000 refugees from Iraq in our camps in Jordan, Iran and Syria. So far those who have come out from Iraq help have been mostly foreign workers, originally from Somalia and Sudan. None were Iraqis, who fear threats made by the regime against those who tried to leave the country and also the dangers and cost of the journey. In Iraq before the attack food supplies to last until April were distributed. Our concern now is that unless public order is re-established immediately, there could be an exodus of the Iraqi people with a new humanitarian disaster". (Fides Service 11/4/2003 EM lines 27 Words: 321)