EU offers €300m in disaster aid
31/12/2004 - 13:42:24The EU has set by €300m in an emergency fund to aid countries hit by the deadly tidal waves.
Louis Michel, EC development aid commissioner, said in Brussels that amount could be taken from the union’s €100bn annual budget to provide immediate aid – shipments of tents, drinking water, mobile hospitals, medicine and body bags – as well as long-term reconstruction.
Michel said he would push for a donors’ conference at a special meeting in the Indonesian capital Jakarta on January 6.
Foreign ministers from across Asia, including India, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, the United States, Australia and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan were to attend the meeting.
Michel and senior officials from Luxembourg, which takes over the EU presidency tomorrow, are to head to Sri Lanka and Indonesia this weekend to assess what urgent aid the EU can provide.
“We need to work at co-ordination of reconstruction efforts,” Michel said, adding the death toll was becoming ”more grave than predicted".
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