By Robert Evans
GENEVA (Reuters) - At least one million Afghans face starvation, and many are already dying, because of their country's long-running civil war and a devastating drought, a senior U.N. official said Tuesday.
Kenzo Oshima, top aide on humanitarian affairs to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan (news - web sites), told a news conference on his return from Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Pakistan that ''a big tragedy'' was in the making and urgent international help was vital.
''We believe at least one million people are at risk of famine,'' declared Oshima who toured camps for displaced persons in areas controlled by the ruling Taliban movement and the opposition Northern Alliance.
Of these, 500,000 were in Afghan camps and the rest were in isolated areas -- where aid agencies still allowed to operate by the Taliban have little or no access because of the lack of roads or security restrictions imposed by the authorities.
''This threatens to become a major humanitarian catastrophe,'' said Oshima, recently-appointed head of the U.N.'s Department of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
''There have already been many deaths,'' he told the news conference, called within two hours of his return to Geneva. In one crammed camp, at Herat in the west, he saw a graveyard ''full of small, new graves of children.''
He also visited a site where new refugees are concentrated at Jallouzai in Pakistan -- to where he said at least 180,000 Afghans had fled in recent months with 700 still crossing the frontier every day.
''Sea Of People In Misery''
''I saw a sea of people living in unbelievable misery,'' he added.
Reuter reports from the region say the Pakistani authorities, already sheltering some two million Afghan refugees for nearly two decades with little outside help, have refused to allow a new camp to be set up.
The Jallouzai refugees, Reuter correspondent Jack Redden reported, are kept in a field without proper shelter and no water or sanitation.
Oshima, who is Annan's Emergency Relief Coordinator and a U.N. Under-Secretary General, said the situation was ''a big tragedy indeed and one that cries out for international help.''
He said he had asked U.N. officials in the region to rapidly draw up a list of the most urgently needed supplies and would be meeting diplomats from donor countries in Geneva, and later this week in New York, to appeal for funding.
Between now and July, when harvesting begins, ''we will need tens of millions of dollars, and much more later,'' Oshima added. ''We need food, shelter equipment and water.''
He said it was essential to be able to deliver this to villages as well as camps ''to tackle the problem at the root....and give people in the camps an incentive to return home, and to villagers to stay put.''
In a meeting with Taliban officials, he had set out the need for easing restrictions on movement for aid workers -- including those from U.N. and voluntary agencies -- and let them proceed ''with the least possible impediment.''
He said he believed the Taliban, who recently shut down the U.N. office in Kabul, the capital, understood this ''and will set up arrangements to deal with the practical problems we face.''