6.5 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, January to
March 2003
•
environmental
damage and delays to reconstruction because of
booby-trapped
oil
installations;
•
disruption
to OFF; and
•
use of
CBW.
200.
Ms Short added
that collaboration between military and humanitarian
planners
needed to
keep improving.98
She warned
that the international humanitarian system was
“under
considerable strain” with:
“…
enormously complicated problems with drought and food shortages in
southern
Africa, the
horn of Africa and Angola. Every day five million people in
Afghanistan
need food
aid, and the humanitarian situation on the west bank and Gaza is
very
serious and
getting worse. My department’s resources and those of the
international
humanitarian
system are therefore strained.”
201.
In response to
a question from Mr Crispin Blunt (Conservative) about the
resources
available
to DFID, Ms Short explained that the UK contribution to any
international
humanitarian
crisis, as determined by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and
Development
(OECD), was just over 5 percent of the total. She cautioned that,
faced
with
demands elsewhere, the international humanitarian system and DFID’s
own budget
were
strained: “We will play our part in the international system, but
the Department is
not flush
with resources – I must frankly warn the House that they are
short.”99
202.
At the end
of January, officials advised Ms Short that the UK might
be
expected to
make a contribution to humanitarian relief and reconstruction in
Iraq
that was
much larger than DFID’s contingency reserve.
203.
On 21 January,
at Ms Short’s request, Mr Alistair Fernie, Head of DFID
Middle
East and
North Africa Department, advised “how to maximise the chances of
securing
additional
funding from the Treasury to cover the costs of [a] DFID
humanitarian
204.
Mr Fernie
recommended that Ms Short should speak, rather than write,
to
Mr Gordon
Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. A letter would invite a
formal
response,
and Treasury officials were likely to caution Mr Brown against
providing any
broad
assurance on funding and might recommend that DFID “unpick” its
2003/04
spending
plan, to be agreed shortly, in order to provide more funding for
Iraq.
98
House of
Commons, Official
Report, 30
January 2003, columns 1055-1056.
99
House of
Commons, Official
Report, 30
January 2003, columns 1057-1058.
100
Minute
Fernie to PS/Secretary of State [DFID], 21 January 2003, ‘Iraq
contingency planning:
financial provision’.
345