India And Pakistan Ink Aid Pact Nine Months After Killer Quake

DISASTER MANAGEMENT

File photo: Pakistani's work to save people trapped in a collapsed building which was destroyed by the major earthquake.

by Staff Writers
New Delhi (AFP) Jul 11, 2006
India Tuesday approved a donation of 25 million dollars to buy building materials for Pakistani Kashmir nine months after a major earthquake killed 73,000 people there. The Indian foreign ministry said the assistance was part of a pledge made at an UN-sponsored donors' conference for the victims of the October 2005 earthquake which razed tens of thousands of homes in Pakistan.

"A memorandum of understanding setting out the modalities for release of these funds to enable Pakistan to procure reconstruction material according to its requirements was signed today," the ministry said in a statement.

The aid was pledged by New Delhi one month after the earthquake, which also claimed 1,300 lives in Indian Kashmir. The reason for the delayed disbursement was not given.

"The government of India hopes that this will assist the families who have been devastated by the earthquake in rebuilding their lives," the statment said as Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran and Pakistan's envoy in India, Aziz Ahmad Khan, inked the deal.

The statement stressed that New Delhi had sent five million dollars of emergency aid immediately after the quake in addition to relief supplies worth 10.5 million dollars donated by charities and state-backed welfare agencies.

Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan temporarily buried their hostilities and opened the militarised Line of Control, which divides the Indian and Pakistani zones of Kashmir, for relief following the earthquake.

Source: Agence France-Presse

DISASTER MANAGEMENT

Senate Votes to overhaul US Emergency Agency

Washington (AFP) Jul 12, 2006
About 11 months after deadly Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the US Senate Tuesday decided to overhaul the Federal Emergency Management Agency that was strongly criticized in two congressional reports.

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