Nato to send engineers to help quake relief
Nato allies today agreed to dispatch hundreds of military engineers, medics and other troops to reinforce the earthquake relief effort in Pakistan.
The alliance also said it was stepping up its airlift of aid to Pakistan from Europe, but continued to struggle to find helicopters that are desperately needed to rush aid into the high mountains of Kashmir and northern Pakistan.
It said up to 1,000 troops would go, including about 300 Spanish engineers, 140 from Poland and additional units from Italy, Lithuania and other nations.
The number of extra helicopters Nato would send was unlikely to exceed five, Nato officials said, and they were coming from Germany, which has already send two big cargo choppers.
However, officials pointed out that individual allies have separately sent about 40 helicopters to Pakistan, with the United States taking a lead role.
It also said it would speed up the airlift to Pakistan with 12 flights by giant C-17 cargo planes provided by Britain and the United States to carry aid from the UN refugee agency in the next few days.
The UN’s top relief co-ordinator, Jan Egeland, called for the creation of non-stop flights reminiscent of the US and British airlift of essential supplies to West Berlin in the late 1940s when Soviet forces cut the city off from the West.
Central to the plans is the deployment of engineers and medics from the alliance’s elite Nato Response Force to clear roads blocked by the quake and subsequent mudslides and set up field hospitals.
Nato officials said it will mark the largest operation so far for the new force, which has previously been used to help protect last year’s elections in Afghanistan, guard the Athens Olympics and co-ordinate an airlift of European aid to the United States after Hurricane Katrina.
Nato is running an airlift of aid to Pakistan out of bases in Germany and Turkey.
The operation out of Turkey is Nato’s biggest ever joint airlift with the UN refugee agency. In aims to ferry some 860 tons of UNHCR supplies to Pakistan over 10-15 days.
So far the operation has moved more than 60 tons of tents, blankets and other items from Turkey to Pakistan, UNHCR said.
Another five Nato flights by French, British, Greek and Turkish cargo planes were scheduled to leave from Turkey’s Incirlik air base today.
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