With a harsh winter only half over and food running short all over the former Soviet Union, a dozen U.S. cargo planes packed with food and medicine are due Monday, the first wave of a big American relief effort.
The American C-5 and C-141 military transports, flying from Germany and Turkey, will kick off Operation Provide Hope, whose organizers plan to bring 54 planeloads of aid this month to the former Soviet republics.The only exception is Georgia, which is considered too dangerous following weeks of fighting in the capital, Tbilisi. Georgia is not a member of the new commonwealth that replaced the Soviet Union.
Marking the start of the effort, Secretary of State James A. Baker III is to arrive for an eight-day trip that will take him to the Caucasus, three Asian republics and a city in the Ural Mountains.
Baker and his German counterpart, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, will see off one of five flights leaving Germany on Monday, U.S. officials said. Another seven flights are to leave Turkey the same day.
At Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany, U.S. military personnel prepared Saturday for the first flights, strapping food and medical supplies onto huge pallets that were to be loaded aboard cargo planes.
Eleven of the cargo planes will fly to Moscow and other republic capitals, and one will go to St. Petersburg, Russia's second-biggest city, officials said.
A U.S. official said most of the aid is bulk-food items for institutions like schools that could feed many people at a time.
One major concern is the prospect of humanitarian aid ending up in the hands of black marketeers. In Moscow alone, thousands of police officers have been assigned to the task of safeguarding Western aid.
"I think we have allocated large forces to this task, considering the level of crime in Moscow," said Yuri Kolesnitchenko, the commander of one of the special units.
Police officials maintain only a fraction of the aid is being stolen this winter. However, products that arrived in aid shipments are sometimes seen in street kiosks here, where they are sold at inflated prices.
U.S. officials acknowledge that the 54 planeloads of food and medicine will only make a dent in the huge needs of the disintegrated Soviet Union.