Following is excerpt of the U.N. briefing:

U.N. INFORMATION CENTER

Press briefing by the UN offices for Pakistan and Afghanistan

03 Nov 2001

Lindsey Davies, Spokesperson for World Food Program

As the deadline for winter ticks away and the need to preposition massive quantities of food for people living in the mountain areas of the country is ever critical, WFP is turning somersaults to increase the amount of trucks on the road and the amount of food delivered into these areas before roads are made impassable by winter.

--The priority for WFP is to deliver 39,000 tonnes of food to feed 700,000 people living in the isolated Central Highlands, the Panjsheer Valley and five districts in the North Eastern province of Badakshan which usually get cut off by snow, by the end of this month. So far about 7,000 tonnes have gone in leaving a balance of 32,000 tonnes to be delivered over the next three to four weeks.

-- We are working to augment the trucking capacity inside Afghanistan. As a priority we will focus on the snow inaccessible areas, but the increased capacity will serve the rest of the country when needed. trucks.

--WFP has already hired an arctic/harsh environment specialist who is drawing up plans for WFP to set up a logistics base camp at the tip of the Anjuman pass. This is a 6000-meter high pass that leads into the Panjsheer valley. This camp will help to continue the food convoys and to supply them with fuel, accommodation for drivers, trucks and snow ploughs. This is the first time this will be done in Afghanistan. The aim is to keep the Anjuman Pass -- the only link in the Pansheer Valley from the north -- open as long as possible.

--We are pulling out the stops at every turn to get the vehicles and equipment we need in to do the job, if not, then as a last option we will have to use air operations. WFP already has an emergency air cell operating in Islamabad who is working on the technical aspect of the operation. We have the planes and personnel on standby if necessary from our Sudan operation -- which back in 1998 during the famine was hailed the 'largest humanitarian airdrop operation in the world.'

--But that's not all, if we've got the logistics; we need to have enough food flowing to deliver. To speed this process up, WFP is buying bulk quantities of the food in the region, including Iran and Kazakhstan, and tomorrow (Sunday), 2 huge bagging machines will be flown in from WFP's Djibouti operation to Turkemenabad. This means we can bring in bulk wheat and bag it insitu and load it immediately onto trucks, enabling us to take it more quickly and efficiently to the north and north west of Afghanistan. Turkmenabad will become a major hub as it has road links to transport food to the north and north west of the country as well as rail and road networks to Tajikistan which allows WFP to get into the northeast. . . .