EU Commissioner Says US Has Compromised Aid Workers' Impartiality And Safety

PRAGUE, Sept 24 (AFP) - The European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Poul Nielson, accused the United States on Friday of putting aid workers` lives at risk by blurring the line between military and humanitarian aid.
"There is a lot we can do to reduce the risk and the answer is not to do what is being done in several places," Nielson told AFP, speaking the day after two groups in Iraq claimed they had murdered two female Italian aid workers taken hostage in the country.
"In Afghanistan, for example, aid workers have lost their lives because the credibility of the impartiality and neutrality of aid workers has been questioned and reduced since the US has been using soldiers in civilian clothes, but armed, to deliver humanitarian aid. This brings into question the neutrality of aid workers," he said.
"We have tried to make them stop this but we have not succeeded.
"We must respect the need for impartiality and neutrality of humanitarian aid to stay away from politics. That is the only defence for the safety of humanitarian aid workers that we have and is something that we need to discuss," he added.
Nielson was speaking in Prague, where he had earlier addressed an international conference on the enlarged European Union`s responsibility in terms of development aid.
At the conference he urged the 25 EU nations to work together more in providing aid.
"We must avoid duplication and multi-administration and must cooperate more closely to simplify how we work," he said, pleading for donor countries to focus on better long-term aid projects instead of "succumbing to the fashion of the moment".
The conference also heard several calls for the EU to improve trade opportunities for developing countries instead of just focusing on providing aid.
Both Nielson and former Czech president Vaclav Havel said the 10 countries which joined the EU on May 1 -- eight of them former Soviet satellites -- had a role to play in alleviating world poverty.
"We must not forget that together with EU membership we have not just accepted some benefits but also part of the European responsibility," Havel said.
"Not to care in today`s global world about what is happening in other parts of the planet would to a large extent be suicide. The problems grow and in the end we could all pay."
Nielson urged the general public in the EU, particularly in the new member states, to show greater support for developing countries.
"Under communism, public collections were banned so it is much harder to get people to donate money to charity in this region than in the west, where there is a long tradition of giving to charity," Jan Plesinger, a senior Czech member of aid umbrella organisation CONCORD, told AFP.
By contrast, the former Soviet Bloc nations had experience of adapting to life after four decades of communism which they could pass on to the many developing countries currently in the process of transition, Czech Deputy Foreign Minister Petr Kolar said.