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The international aid effort for countries affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami is moving into "Phase Two," focusing more on re-construction than pure emergency relief, a top UN official said on Friday.
"Three weeks down the line, I think now we are quite impressed with how rapidly the recovery efforts of people are starting to take place," Margareta Wahlstrom, the UN's special tsunami envoy, told a news conference in the Thai capital.
"We are now reaching very quickly the second phase of our relief operation, which will focus on how to support people to regain their livelihoods - how to get them back to work, how to make sure the children go back to school, how to prevent the outbreak of diseases."
The shift in focus would lead to a gradual reduction in the military aid effort, especially army helicopters which have been the only way of reaching many isolated tsunami-hit communities - especially in the Indonesian province of Aceh.
Instead, Wahlstrom said aid agencies would be relying more on repaired roads or sea routes to deliver longer-term aid to help hundreds of thousands of survivors get back on their feet.
A simmering 30-year separatist rebellion in Aceh has caused the Indonesian Government to fret about the safety of foreign aid workers in the region, although Wahlstrom said the UN had no specific worries.
"For the time being we have no security concerns," Wahlstrom said. "Our situation has not changed in Aceh in terms of how we work and how we organize ourselves."
Rebel leaders have repeatedly said they welcome international relief efforts spearheaded by the UN and would not attack aid workers or convoys.
The death toll from the killer waves, which thumped into the shores of the Indian Ocean on December 26, stands at over 225,000, a figure which is likely to creep up, Wahlstrom said, although a clear picture of the extent of physical damage had emerged.
Also on Friday, India said it was considering a dedicated radio frequency to alert people, as well as ways to ensure quick food and drinking water supplies in the event of natural disasters.
"Preparedness on the ground could make the early warning system more effective," Kapil Sibal, India's minister for science and technology and ocean development, said at a conference in New Delhi of international experts on handling natural disasters.
(China Daily January 22, 2005)
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