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Indonesia restricts aid workers in Aceh
Indonesia told aid workers helping tsunami victims in its worst-hit region, Aceh, on Tuesday not to venture beyond two large cities on Sumatra island because of what it said were militant threats. Indonesia's head of relief operations said agencies would need permission to work outside the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, and the ravaged west coast town of Meulaboh. Asked if Aceh was unsafe for international aid workers, Budi Atmaji said: "Yes, in some places." However, separatist rebels said they would never attack aid workers -- who in turn said they were not overly worried. Huge waves triggered on Dec. 26 by an earthquake 150 km (94 miles) out to sea from Meulaboh killed at least 157,000 people around the Indian Ocean -- 105,500 in Indonesia, 30,000 in Sri Lanka and 15,000 in India. Many of the more than 5,000 killed in Thailand were tourists from Europe and around the world. Interpol and 20 national police forces launched history's biggest disaster victim identification system to unravel the mesh of forensic data from the bodies, hundreds of which were to be exhumed for checks after hasty burials right after the tsunami. Adding to the anguish of relatives, experts at the makeshift police headquarters on the tsunami-hit island of Phuket said putting names to all the corpses -- cross-referencing dental records, fingerprints and DNA from bodies and from the missing -- could take months. "It wouldn't be unreasonable to expect that this will go longer than six months," said Jeff Emery, an Australian police expert in charge of about 60 detectives, doctors and pathologists from a score of nations. Interpol said it would also help identification efforts in other countries, but along the coast of Sri Lanka, Indonesia and elsewhere, thousands of victims lie buried in unmarked graves. Sri Lanka said it was renewing efforts to enforce a law barring people from building within 300 meters (330 yards) of the sea. Thousands of those killed by the tsunami were living in illegally constructed homes along the coast. At a meeting in Geneva, the United Nations urged donors to set a record by meeting in full its $1.0 billion appeal for immediate aid to tsunami victims. Past disaster appeals, even high-profile ones, failed to bring in all the money sought. "It is very important we get money early on ... Hunger doesn't wait, disease doesn't wait. We need to be quicker," said Jan Egeland, the U.N.'s emergency relief coordinator. International donations have been unprecedented, with governments, agencies and individuals promising over $7 billion. "GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT" Aceh was worst hit and is the focus of global aid efforts, bringing unprecedented outside involvement in an area where for three decades the army and separatist rebels have clashed. Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said Indonesia and GAM (Free Aceh Movement) separatists had reached "a gentlemen's agreement" not to launch an offensive and to ensure help reached the needy.
"It is not a cease-fire in the sense of a formal agreement ... but this is a practical way to allow both sides, particularly our troops, to help the victims," he told the BBC. Indonesian military chief General Endriartono Sutarto said in Banda Aceh he had tried to contact GAM regarding a full cease-fire, "but I got no response up to now." The government said it was sending around 2,000 more troops and 1,000 military cadets to Aceh to help with reconstruction. A militant Islamic group in the world's most populous Muslim nation warned foreign aid agencies in Aceh not to stray from their humanitarian mission. "We can work together. But if they came here with some hidden agenda -- colonialism, imperialism or missionary, I think this is very, very dangerous," said Hilmy Bakar Almascaty, a leader of the Islamic Defenders Front, which is helping the cleanup. The very scale of the aid has brought its own problems, corruption among them. "The government faces a second tsunami of aid," said Luky Djani of Indonesia Corruption Watch. "They are deluged by the huge amount of donations and they don't know how to manage and how to deliver it in the right way." U.N. officials said they would adopt new steps to show they were using the money well, such as setting up a Web site on which the public could track every tsunami aid dollar. President Bush (news - web sites) said the United States should keep up aid efforts even after attention shifts from a disaster which left a million homeless and five times as many needing help. "The intense scrutiny may dissipate, it probably will. But our focus has got to stay on this part of the world. We have a duty," he said. SURVIVOR On India's remote Andaman islands, the sea again washed into the heart of the main city, Port Blair, at high tide, lapping at doors. People fled to nearby hillocks and many slept on the pavements on high ground. Long after the world had given up hope of finding more survivors, a ship brought an Aceh man into port in Malaysia. He had been swept out to sea by the tsunami and survived adrift living on coconuts and at times giving up hope of living. "The first day I clung to a piece of wood, the second day I retrieved a small fishing boat but it was leaking. I was in the small boat for four days before I managed to get on a raft," said Ari Afrizal, 21. |
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