Broad participation for humanitarian meeting in Geneva

The humanitarian conference will take place in Geneva on Saturday. www.cicg.ch

Apart from the United States, all countries invited to a Swiss humanitarian meeting on Iraq have said they will attend.

The meeting, which will take place this weekend in Geneva, was organised on the initiative of the new Swiss foreign minister, Micheline Calmy-Rey.

The states invited include all those with borders to Iraq, the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, and the European Union. Iraq itself was not invited.

The meeting will also be attended by a wide range of aid and humanitarian organisations, including the United Nations Refugee Agency, and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Guiding role

The meeting will be led by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), whose director Walter Fust apparently proposed the idea for such a conference to Calmy-Rey in the first place.

The response will come as a relief to the Swiss organisers, following doubts from some quarters that such a meeting could be helpful at this point.

United Nations aid agencies have been preparing for a possible war in Iraq for some time, and it is unlikely that the meeting in Geneva will lead to any major changes of plan.

But the fact that Ruud Lubbers, the head of the UN refugee agency, and Balthasar Staehelin, the ICRC’s chief delegate for North Africa and the Middle East, will attend, is a sign that humanitarian organisations feel the meeting could be beneficial.

Antonella Notari, spokeswoman for the ICRC, said the meeting would facilitate “an exchange of views and information on the current humanitarian situation in Iraq”.

Flexible agenda

The meeting will be officially opened with a speech by Micheline Calmy-Rey on Saturday afternoon. After that the proceedings will be led by SDC director Walter Fust.

Calmy-Rey’s plan to keep a low profile is being seen as an attempt to avoid any politicisation of the meeting; this is also the reason why Iraq was kept off the list of invitees.

Some observers suggest that the refusal of the US to participate could also have been beneficial in this respect.

SDC officials are stressing that the tone of the meeting will be highly practical, focusing on the logistics of providing aid to Iraq in the event of war.

“The agenda includes practical issues of humanitarian aid: for example contingency planning, trying to anticipate the movements of refugees, and so on,” said SDC spokesman Joachim Ahrens.

“We see the meeting as a platform to exchange very practical technical humanitarian issues,” he told swissinfo.

“But the fine tuning of the agenda is still going on,” he added. “The meeting was called at very short notice, so we are trying to be as flexible as possible.”

Aid unit

Switzerland already has a humanitarian coordinator in Baghdad and has provided almost SFr5 million ($3.7 million) a year in aid to Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War.

Now the SDC’s humanitarian aid unit is standing by to increase support to Iraq should war break out.

“We have experts in water and sanitation, and medical experts,” said Ahrens. “They are being prepared now for an eventual field mission.”

Peace

The Geneva meeting, however, is a long way from Calmy-Rey’s first ambitions, which were to host a “last chance for peace” conference in Switzerland, bringing together the United States and Iraq.

Her proposal was rebuffed by US Secretary of State Colin Powell when he met Calmy-Rey last month at the World Economic Forum summit in Davos.

But the new Swiss foreign minister, who has apparently been agonising over the Iraq crisis since taking office at the beginning of the year, refused to let go of the idea that Switzerland must do something.

The meeting in Geneva has not pleased everyone: even some of Calmy-Rey’s colleagues in the Swiss cabinet were sceptical at the idea.

But the news that almost all the invited countries and organisations have agreed to attend should silence some of her critics, for the time being at least.

swissinfo, Imogen Foulkes

In brief

An overwhelming majority of Swiss are against war against Iraq, according to a poll carried out by the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation.

Nearly 88 per cent of those polled said they were against war.

Just 5.4 per cent of the 930 respondents said they supported military action, while 6.6 per cent had no opinion.

The poll showed that even with UN Security Council backing, nearly three out of four Swiss would still be against war in Iraq, versus almost 18 per cent who would support it.

Over 60 per cent of those polled also said Switzerland should play a more active role in helping to resolve any conflict.

Key facts

29 countries and 21 aid organisations have agreed to attend the meeting.
Iraq was not invited, and the United States has said it will not participate.
The two day meeting will be led by the Swiss Agency for Cooperation and Development
Switzerland has provided almost SFr5 million worth of aid a year to Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War.