UN pulling non-essential staff from Lebanon

GENEVA, July 18 (Reuters) The United Nations and its agencies are pulling non-essential staff and family members from Lebanon, but workers involved in relief efforts are staying and more are going in, humanitarian aid chief Jan Egeland said today.

Calling for an immediate ceasefire between Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and the Israeli army, Egeland said the United Nations was preparing an emergency appeal to strengthen its aid effort.

''This is a time when the people of Lebanon need the U.N. That is why I am sending more people from my office,'' said Egeland, who heads the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Help was needed for hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon who had fled their homes in the face of Israeli bombing and artillery attacks, he said.

''We need to stop this before it becomes an even greater emergency,'' he added.

''It is heartbreaking to see that all the hard work rebuilding Lebanon ... (since the civil war of the 1980s and Israeli strikes in the early 1990s) seems to be lost,'' he said.

''So my appeal to both sides is: we need a ceasefire, we need to stop this. And now. I say to Hizbollah: stop raining missiles into Israel. I say to the Israeli Defence Forces: the bombing of Lebanon has to stop.'' Egeland said the U.N. funding appeal, to be issued within a few days, would focus on getting water supplies and sanitation and emergency health treatment.

Compiling the appeal -- which will cover needs for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and non-U.N. agencies like the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) -- was slow because of problems in getting around to assess needs.

''Roads and bridges have been destroyed, and it is very dangerous even to move in southern Lebanon,'' he said. These problems made it difficult to predict immediately how much in funding the appeal would seek.

Egeland said he was urging the Israeli army to allow ambulances and medical workers to take aid to injured civilians.

''We have vital medical supplies in Beirut that can't get to hospitals in southern Lebanon where there is need for them,'' he said.

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