Aid door to Lebanon closed, U.N. agencies say

MATTER OF HOURS

“We have urgently needed tents, mattresses, blankets and other aid which would be delivered in only a matter of hours if only we had access to the country,” said Pagonis.

Olmert’s announcement of an air lift and a linked offer of a humanitarian corridor from Israel itself came after talks in Jerusalem with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Top U.N. officials and independent humanitarian bodies have been calling on Israel for days to guarantee the security of aid convoys to heavily bombed areas of the south.

But, asked later for comment on the Israeli move, Pagonis said it did not appear “to address the immediate situation we are confronted with right now” — the absence of safe passage authorisation for the supplies waiting in Syria.

And another U.N. source said a route through Israel would take much longer to organise and greatly delay the arrival of urgently needed food, medical supplies and relief equipment.

In a separate telephone news conference, officials of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva and Beirut said they were also having problems in moving around in Lebanon.

“A big problem is access, to bring first aid and to get supplies to hospitals,” WHO representative in Lebanon Jaouad Mahjour said on a radio-telephone link from Beirut. “Another big problem is evacuating the injured.”