The Washington Post
January 8, 1993
SARAJEVO, Jan. 7 – The United Nations relief effort for Bosnia is failing to save people from dying and must be dramatically reinforced in besieged Sarajevo, a top U.N. relief official said today.
Jose-Maria Mendiluce, special envoy here for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said that early warnings about people freezing to death in Bosnia have come true and added that the only way to avert further misery is to stop the war.
“If something radical doesn’t take place, many people will die this winter,” Mendiluce said at a press conference. “There is no humanitarian solution to this humanitarian tragedy. There is only a political solution.”
In bitter comments, he said criticism about the relief program’s shortcomings should not be aimed at the UNHCR, which is doing the best job it can in a war zone. He suggested that Western governments should have known, or did know, that a U.N. relief program could not answer the problems of the war.
“We should not be used as an alibi,” he said. “We didn’t invent this war, so we can’t be blamed every day for its consequences.”
His comments lent weight to calls for military intervention to stop the war if ongoing peace talks in Geneva fall apart. But Mendiluce stopped short of calling for Western intervention, saying that his position as a U.N. relief official prevented him from speaking out on such topics.
On Wednesday, Mendiluce visited one of the places that received too little aid too late — a wrecked nursing home on Sarajevo’s front line where old people have been dying of the cold at the rate of three a day. He said the home will be evacuated as soon as possible.
“There are many old people dying and suffering in apartments in Sarajevo today,” he said. “We will probably find many bodies in other places. We will never be able to save 100 percent of the people if there is no peace.”
He vowed to strengthen the relief program in Sarajevo, which he described as a city at enormous risk due to a lack of food, electricity and heating. He said the UNHCR staff based here would be doubled and that greater amounts of higher quality food would be brought in, as well as tens of thousands of sleeping bags and thousands of tons of wood and coal for home heating.
Instead of handing the food and fuel to the Bosnian government, the UNHCR would try to deliver it directly to some 40 distribution centers and 90 collective kitchens, Mendiluce said. He acknowledged that misappropriation of U.N. aid has taken place but said he could not quantify it.
