Afghanistan aid in EU spotlight

Series Title
Series Details Vol.7, No.40, 1.11.01, p8
Publication Date 31/10/2001
Content Type

Date: 31/10/01

AID to Afghanistan will come under the spotlight at a top-level conference in Brussels next week.

The hearing in the European Parliament on 7 November will also debate the type of government most likely to succeed the Taliban after the current international crisis is over. Among the speakers will be development and humanitarian aid chief Poul Nielson; Ruud Lubbers, UN High Commissioner for Refugees; Parliamentary President Nicole Fontaine; and Catherine Bertini, executive director of the World Food Programme.

Welsh MEP Glenys Kinnock, a member of the Parliament's development committee which has organised the discussion, said: "If anything comes out of the horrors of 11 September and this mass murder, surely it will be that the wealthy of the world must, once and for all, understand a basic truth: it is that if they do not systematically work to combat poverty, they will contribute to conditions which breed resentment and provide desperate and fertile minds which can be captured by extremism."

Representatives from charities and humanitarian organisations attending the conference include: Lotte Leicht, director of Human Rights Watch Europe; Sabira Mateen of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan; Olivier Durr, of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Brend McConnell, director of the Office for Disaster Assistance.

Related Links
http://europarl.europa.eu/hearings/20011107/deve/programme_en.pdf http://europarl.europa.eu/hearings/20011107/deve/programme_en.pdf

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