NEW YORK, Nov 7: The top United Nations relief official on Monday made an urgent appeal to the member states to convert some $1.03 billion of pledges into commitments and contribution in order to meet the ongoing relief operations to save thousands of Pakistani earthquake victims from the imminent death.

Addressing a press conference the Undersecretary General of United Nations Humanitarian Assistance programme, Jan Egeland, asserted that most relief agencies working in the area fear that “operations will come to a halt no additional funding is received in coming days.”

He said that as of today “we have $312 million flash appeal revised to $550 million but we have $133 million in pledges and commitments compared to $112 million on day of the donor meeting in Geneva.” The largest donor is the United States followed by Japan.

He noted that bilaterally Pakistan has received $133 million from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and another $100 million each from the countries comprising United Arab Emirates.

Mr Egeland underscored that the disaster has so far tolled more than 73,000 lives and the figure is likely to rise to 80,000. In the earthquake affected areas some 3.5 million people have been affected and 70 per cent houses have been destroyed and other 30 per cent damaged.

While dismissing reports that terrorist organizations have taken over the relief operations in Kashmir Mr Egeland stressed that political hurdles between India and Pakistan should be removed in order to streamline the relief operation.

He also paid tributes to the Pakistani diaspora in several countries in coming up with big relief donations to assist the relief agencies in their work.

Saying that only four or five days left before the snow and cold weather sets in the area, he said at this time a total of 119 helicopters were available of which 98 were functional and additional 21 were expected from various entities.

The United States has announced scaling up the troop to more than 1,000 from 564 and is also deploying more of its helicopters.

Reuters adds: The UN, struggling to raise $550 million for a medium-term programme to help victims of the earthquake, appealed on Monday for $42.4 million to fund urgent needs in the region this month.

The call was issued by the world body’s Assistant Emergency Relief Coordinator Yvette Stevens at a meeting in Geneva with diplomats from donor countries and representatives of UN and independent agencies involved in the aid effort.

“This is what we need here and now to cover the next 30 days,” officials attending the closed-door gathering quoted Stevens as saying. “The acute emergency phase of this operation is not yet over.”

Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN’s European headquarters, Masood Khan, told the meeting: “If we do not intervene aggressively now, many lives will be lost,” according to the officials.

Officials in Geneva said that, as of Monday, only $83.8 million had been received in cash and legal commitments from donor countries — mainly the world’s richer nations — to meet an overall UN appeal for $550 million launched in mid-October.

Together with pledges, the total response was $132.4 million, an increase of only $1 million over the past week.

Stevens told Monday’s meeting that providing shelter was the number one priority at present, especially for some 200,000 people living in high valleys above the snow line.

The $42.4 million was intended to be part of the general appeal, officials said.