Russia airlifts aid to Afghanistan

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, NOV. 26. Russia has begun a massive airlift of humanitarian aid to Kabul, with the first 12 jumbojets landing at the Bagram air base near the Afghan capital on Monday morning.

The Ilyushin-76 military transport planes brought flour, trucks and a field hospital for Kabul in a lightening airlift undertaken by the Russian Air Force jointly with the U.S. military in Afghanistan.

``We have begun today a new phase in our humanitarian operation in Afghanistan,'' the Russian President, Mr. Vladimir Putin, told a Cabinet meeting on Monday. He said it was the largest humanitarian airlift Russian had undertaken in many years.

Russian television said the Il-76 planes landed at Bagram at 15- minute intervals. Trucks loaded with flour and technical supplies back in Russia rolled out of the jumbojets and the latter took off without delay. The whole operation took just two to three hours to reduces security risks.

It was not immediately known whether the Russian humanitarian operation was deliberately timed to coincide with the airlift of U.S. commandos to Kandahar, but it served to underline the peaceful nature of Russian involvement in the anti- Taliban campaign in Afghanistan.

Russia's Deputy Minister for Emergency Situations, Mr. Yuri Vorobiev, who is coordinating humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, said about 200 Russian diplomats, doctors and aid workers would set up a field hospital and a relief supply centre in Kabul and will repair a building provided by Afghan authorities as a temporary location of the Russian embassy in Kabul. Under an international aid programme for Afghanistan Russia is also to ship by road 16,000 tons of food to the northern provinces till March 2002. The first convoy of 50 trucks delivered over 3,000 tons of supplies from Tajikistan to Faisabad last week.

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