TASHKENT, Oct 25: Uzbekistan has agreed to open its border with Afghanistan for the first time in three years to let the United Nations deliver emergency aid to hundreds of thousands of Afghans, a top UN official said on Thursday.

“Uzbekistan has agreed to allow the UN for the first time since 1998 to use the Termez river port and barges to move humanitarian aid to the north of Afghanistan,” said Kenzo Oshima, UN undersecretary general for humanitarian aid.

International relief agencies have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe unless the aid supply disrupted by almost three weeks of US air attacks against the Taliban, is resumed.

The Uzbek government closed the southern border at Termez in 1998 after the Taliban seized control of Mazar-i-Sharif and other strategic towns in northern Afghanistan.

Oshima told a news conference in the Uzbek capital Tashkent that he hoped the aid deliveries could start “as soon as possible”.

After more than two decades of civil war and a three-year drought, the worst in recent history, many people in the north of Afghanistan are dependent on international aid to survive.

“The facilities available at the Termez river, including barges, offer tremendous potential for getting food and other relief items into the northern part of Afghanistan,” Oshima said.

A port on the Amu Darya, some 60 kilometres from Mazar-i-Sharif, Termez boasts an airport as well as a bridge with both rail and road access to Afghanistan.

Uzbekistan has become the focus of aid agencies’ efforts to thwart a looming humanitarian crisis as hundreds of thousands of Afghans flee renewed fighting between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance in the wake of the US air strikes.

More than three million Afghans live near Afghanistan’s borders with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, including half a million internally displaced people in and around Mazar-i-Sharif, Oshima said.

The UN aid would be transported over the Amu Darya to the Afghan port of Heiraton and then distributed by Afghan aid workers throughout the north of the country, the Un official said.

He added that the Uzbek government had agreed to open Termez airport to relief agencies “to allow stockpiling of humanitarian items for shipment south”.

The outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province and close to the border with Uzbekistan, have seen fierce clashes over the past week as the Northern Alliance tries to capture this key city from the Taliban.—AFP