-Caveat Lector-
By Sayed Salahuddin
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20010614/wl/afghan_un_dc_4.html
KABUL (Reuters) - The U.N. World Food Program said on Thursday it would
stop supplying bread to the Afghan capital's poor on Friday because talks
with the Taliban rulers on employing women for a survey had failed.
WFP director for Afghanistan Gerard Van Dijk said he was disappointed by
the Taliban's rejection of a WFP proposal for employing local women to
conduct the survey. Bakeries supplying subsidized bread to nearly 300,000
poor people would stop work after the last distribution on Friday.
``Negotiations have failed,'' he told Reuters. ``They did not accept our
proposal. There is no other way out except closing the bakeries.''
Van Dijk said the WFP had proposed female staff of the Taliban's Public
Health Ministry and a group of WFP-selected women conduct the survey to
identify the real beneficiaries of the project.
But officials from Afghanistan purist Taliban movement, which controls
most of Afghanistan, insisted that only women recommended by the Taliban
be permitted to carry out the survey, he said.
Van Dijk said the bakeries could reopen any time after the Taliban accepts
the WFP proposal. ``There is a way if there is a will. We will restart the
program whenever they allow us to do the survey.''
He said U.N. agencies in Kabul had taken precautions in view of possible
food riots after the bakeries are shut down.
PRECAUTIONS ABOUT PROTESTS
``We are taking a low profile, reducing our movement in the city in the
face of the occurrence of possible problems.''
The WFP had said earlier it would halt its program to supply cheap bread
to nearly 300,000 widows, invalids and other vulnerable people in Kabul if
the Taliban refused to allow it to hire Afghan women.
Under Taliban directives, only women can enter homes to interview other
women.
Van Dijk said earlier on Thursday that the Taliban proposal, and a
suggestion that the WFP hire females who speak the local language from
neighboring countries, were costly or impractical.
``Bringing people from other places requires more costs. Some options are
practical and some are less practical. We hope to go to houses to find the
needy people and for that we have to employ local women ourselves,'' he
added.
The Taliban has refused to allow the WFP to hire local women on the
grounds that female employment is banned.
Many aid groups see a contradiction in the ruling that the WFP cannot
employ women for the survey, but can use the Taliban's own female staff
for the purpose.
The hardline Islamic Taliban has said it will not reverse its decision and
does not care if all U.N. aid to the devastated country is halted. It has
appealed to Islamic countries to fill any gap that results and says the
United Nations is using aid as a political weapon.
WFP beneficiaries say closure of the bakeries would force more people to
resort to begging and increase hunger at a time the country faces its
worst drought in 30 years.
``What will befall my five children if I lose the subsidized bread?'' a
woman asked.
``Who will feed them? We have lived for years on bread and tea mostly and
if the bread is taken away, maybe we will starve,'' the desperate woman,
clutching her all-enveloping burqa, said outside a bakery.
``This subsidized bread is my only hope after Allah. I think neither the
Taliban nor the WFP care about us. They all follow their own policies and
we may perish in the middle,'' another woman said. ``Many needy people
like us will be forced to beg.''
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