LEBANON: International donors pledged more than €734 million for immediate relief efforts for war-torn Lebanon, nearly double the target, organisers of a donors' conference in Stockholm said yesterday. The commitments bring to €940 million total reconstruction pledges.
The Government promised a further €2 million in humanitarian aid over two years for the Lebanon and Gaza. The Department of Foreign Affairs said this would bring the amount of Irish aid in the current crisis to €4 million.
Minister of State for Development Conor Lenihan told the conference that all parties must commit themselves to the vision set out in Security Council Resolution 1701 and to a peaceful future for Lebanon and its neighbours.
The Irish funding has been disbursed to UN agencies, the Red Cross and NGOs, "which are providing essential services on the ground". This funding is additional to humanitarian and development assistance to the Palestinian territories in 2006 under the Irish overseas aid programme "which will exceed €4 million".
The Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, sought to allay fears that funds would be appropriated by Hizbullah.
"The conference is being called to assist the Lebanese government. All will be channelled through the government," he told a news conference. "This idea that it will be siphoned one way or another to Hizbullah is a fallacy."
In his speech to some 60 governments and organisations he said the country's economy had gone from recovery to "deep recession". "Lebanon, which only seven weeks ago was full of hope and promise, has been torn to shreds by destruction, displacement, dispossession, desolation, and death," he said.
"The direct damage from this last invasion to our infrastructure and to our public and private property is now running into the billions of dollars," he said.
UN deputy secretary general Mark Malloch Brown said: "If we, the international community, fail in supporting Lebanon now, we fail not just the brave Lebanese people but also their national aspiration for a stable, strong and democratic government that reaches, and supports, all its people throughout the country."
The funds are aimed at Lebanon's immediate relief needs, from shelter for those who lost their homes in Israel's war with Hizbullah, to the removal of unexploded bombs.