A donors' conference on rebuilding areas devastated by October's earthquake will focus on longer term regeneration as well as immediate humanitarian needs, the head of the UNDP said on Wednesday.
United Nations Development Programme administrator Kemal Dervis told Reuters shelter would be a top priority at a November 19 meeting in Islamabad but that agencies had to start discussing how to build employment and infrastructure as well.
"The economic devastation that comes with the physical devastation should not be underestimated," he said.
"It is not just a physical reconstruction effort but also an effort of generating economic activity that can then lead to a self-sustaining kind of situation in the medium-term."
Dervis declined to give an estimate of how much reconstruction would cost, saying assessments by the World Bank and UNDP would be ready "in two or three days".
"The infrastructure has largely been destroyed in part of these communities ... There are of course lessons to be learnt, buildings that can be rebuilt will perhaps be safer. In countries with low income levels it is very, very difficult."
Asked how worried he was about raising finances, Dervis said the United Nations was concerned, which was why UN secretary general Kofi Annan would attend the November 19 meeting.
"We will see estimates of what it will take and then we have to campaign hard so that these resources are indeed made available. We believe that the international community will make the required effort," the UNDP administrator said.
A former Turkish economy minister, Dervis said Turkey's experience of an earthquake in 1999 showed reconstruction was not just a question of building houses and restoring electricity but would take time.
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