Brussels/Sarajevo  —  Following the recent floods in Romania, the regional co-operation effort in bringing relief assistance to the areas hit by the natural disaster has been praiseworthy, said Dr Erhard Busek, Special Co-ordinator of the Stability Pact.

The Sarajevo-based secretariat of the Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Initiative (DPPI) has activated a network of National Civil Protection or Disaster Management Agencies in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro, and Turkey.

Through co-ordinating the activities of governmental, international and regional relief organisations, DPPI managed to prevent overlaps between the simultaneous assistance efforts. Countries and aid agencies contributed primarily though providing water pumps, power generators, blankets and other items for temporary shelters.

SC Busek commented that the DPPI initiative has been a prime example where countries of the region demonstrate a clear and growing “ownership” of an initiative which began under the Stability Pact umbrella, through the involvement of international organizations and donor agencies, such as UNDP, IFRC, NATO, SRSA Sweden.

Since its establishment in 2000, the initiative has held extensive disaster management training for national disaster response agencies, and hosted a joint fire-fighting exercise in May 2004, in which Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian fire-fighters trained together.

More information on DPPI activities can be found under: http://www.dppi.info/

For further information, please contact Stability Pact's Spokesperson
Mr Dragan Barbutovski at the SP Secretariat in Brussels
(Tel: +32 2 401 87 25 or press@stabilitypact.org).

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PR2005/013