GENEVA, Jan 11 (AFP) - Donor nations must speed up delivery of their cash promises for the tsunami disaster relief effort for stricken countries around the Indian Ocean, a senior UN official said Tuesday.
"We need very quickly more signed contracts, more cash, more concrete commitments to help keep this massive effort going in the next six months," UN chief humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland told journalists.
Speaking at the start of a meeting of donor nations in Geneva, he said that of some 3.4 billion dollars of formally recorded aid pledges, only around 300 million dollars had been committed so far to projects, programmes and assistance on the ground.
Egeland said that he expected the conference to produce a "large part" of the UN's appeal launched last week for 977 million dollars for the next six months, and the rest would follow "soon".
But he warned that if pledges for the overall effort were not turned into reality, victims of the earthquake-triggered December 26 disaster, which left more than 157,000 people dead in up to a dozen countries, would feel short-changed.
"They will not forget and we should not forget," he said.
01/11/2005 14:46 GMT - AFP