The United States led a stream of new aid pledges for flood-stricken Pakistan on Thursday, promising a further $60 million to help the Asian country deal with the disaster that has crippled it. “With a new pledge that I am making today of $60 million, the United States will be contributing more than $150 million toward emergency flood relief,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the UN General Assembly. About $92 million of that total is in direct support of the UN relief plan, she added during a debate aimed at pressing for more contributions to the plan. More than four million Pakistanis have been made homeless by nearly three weeks of floods, the United Nations has said, making the critical task of securing greater amounts of aid more urgent. Twice that number are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. Clinton urged other UN member nations to ensure that Pakistan got all the aid it needs. The UN has issued an appeal for $460 million, of which Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said about 60 percent had been pledged. UN chief appealed to UN member states to deliver promised aid to help Pakistan recover from unprecedented floods, saying the disaster was a key test of global solidarity. “Make no mistake: this is a global disaster, a global challenge,” he said. “It is one of the greatest tests of global solidarity,” the UN boss added, pointing out that Pakistan was facing a “slow-motion tsunami.” The UN urged donors to be even more generous than they were to survivors of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and this year's Haiti earthquake. “I realize that many countries, including my own, are facing tough economic conditions and very tight budgets,” Clinton said. “We've also endured an unrelenting stream of disasters this year, from the earthquake in Haiti to wildfires in Russia. But we must work to answer the Pakistani request for help.” “I want the people of Pakistan to know,” Clinton said. “The United States will be with you through this crisis.” Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said that what he called the worst monsoon floods in living memory had presented a challenge that was “far too high for any developing country to handle alone.” “I wish to go back to Islamabad with a clear message for the people of Pakistan that they are not alone,” he said. Other countries followed the US lead in pledging more funds. British Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell, who called the international response so far to the Pakistani floods “woefully inadequate,” said London was doubling its contribution to nearly $100 million. Speaking for the European Union, Belgian Foreign Minister Steven Vanackere promised a further 30 million euros ($38.5 million) on top of 110 million euros already committed. Earlier, Qureshi said Pakistan would “revisit” its budget because of the floods. Speaking at a conference at New York's Asia Society to publicize Pakistan's plight, he said Islamabad would use all its resources to tackle the impact of the flooding. “We will re-prioritize our budgetary allocations. We will revisit our budget, because we have to focus on these people, we have to rehabilitate them, we have to reconstruct the flood-affected areas, infrastructure,” he said. Western nations have been among the main foreign donors so far. The US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, told reporters at the New York meeting that Pakistan's neighbor China “should step up to the plate.” Qureshi defended China, saying it had given cash and provided food and shelter for some 27,000 people cut off in northern Pakistan. “If you put it all together, it's substantial,” he said. Qureshi said the economic damage was at least $43 billion and warned that failure to assist, “could undermine the hard won gains made by the government in our difficult and painful war against terrorism.” The General Assembly adopted a resolution urging the international community to help Pakistan recover, as foreign donors belatedly rallied in support of the embattled nation. The Asian Development Bank said it would provide $2 billion to repair roads, bridges, power lines, homes, schools, medical facilities and farm structures, and the World Bank has promised to lend $900 million. At least six million flood survivors in desperate need of food, shelter and clean drinking water require humanitarian assistance to survive, as concerns grow over potential cholera, typhoid and hepatitis outbreaks. The floods wiped out villages, farmland and infrastructure, and UN aid coordination body OCHA said more than 650,000 homeless families were still without basic shelter. In Islamabad, US Senator John Kerry and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari urged the world to act swiftly to stop extremists exploiting the country's devastating floods and to prevent social unrest.
