UN lifts travel ban on relief workers

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia -- The United Nations lifted a travel ban yesterday on aid workers in Indonesia's tsunami-battered Aceh province, the scene of a decades-long conflict between rebels and government forces that has raised concerns about the safety of relief efforts.

A magnitude 6.3 earthquake shook northern Japan late yesterday, but there was no danger of a tsunami or reports of damage. Earlier in the day, an international conference on disaster reduction opened in Kobe, Japan.

Conference participants gathered to discuss a tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean that might have saved thousands if it had been in place when the tsunami struck on Dec. 26, killing more than 162,000 people in 11 nations.

As aid work picked up speed in worst-hit Aceh province, even Afghanistan joined the relief efforts, sending a 20-member team, including 12 military doctors, equipment, blankets, and dried fruit.

"It's a symbolic gesture," Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said of his nation's first ever international relief mission. "We want to prove that once again we can be a useful member of the world community."

The United Nations imposed a 24-hour travel ban on its staff in parts of Aceh on Monday following reports that fighting had broken out between insurgents and the army.

UN security consultant Werner Van den Berg said the world body decided not to renew the ban after speaking with police in the coastal city of Lhoksaumawe about reported fighting there.

Colonel Nachrowi Djazairi, a military spokesman in Banda Aceh, said he had received reports of a rebel attack, but had few details.

The Free Aceh Movement rebels, who have been fighting for autonomy since 1976, have dismissed government allegations they would attack relief convoys to steal food.

Other aid groups and foreign troops helping in the relief effort in Aceh said they were working as normal, and a US military spokesman said American forces did not believe the security situation had changed in recent days.

"We're coordinating our force protection measures with the Indonesian government and taking appropriate security measures," Marine Captain Joe Plenzler said. "We've been doing that since the start, it's nothing new."

In the village of Suak Beukah, where American and Indonesian troops unloaded rice and drinking water from a helicopter, a local leader said some people have contracted malaria.

Health specialists fear malaria and another mosquito-borne disease, dengue fever, could kill 100,000 people in affected areas of southern Asia.

Captain Matt Klunder said US helicopters were flying about 80 daily missions to Aceh. He said the desperation of the first days after the disaster, when villagers often mobbed helicopters, had largely abated.