EU activates crisis management system to aid quake-hit Haiti

(LA GRANJA) - The EU on Wednesday activated its emergency crisis management system to help quake-hit Haiti, French Secretary of State for European Affairs Pierre Lellouche said.

"We have put in place at the European level all crisis and aid management mechanisms. We have put in place the entire European crisis management system," he told AFP on the sidelines on an informal meeting of European affairs ministers in La Granja in central Spain.

"On the part of France we have organised the dispatch of two planes with police and medicine. But there exists at the European Union level a crisis management mechanism. All this has been activated by the Spanish presidency of the EU and the European Commission."

Spain, which took over the rotating six-month presidency of the European Union from Sweden on January 1, said it would make its logistics base in Panama available for the bloc's aid effort.

"Spain has offered the use of its humanitarian base in Panama for the EU, the Commission and all member states, to help get humanitarian aid to the people of Haiti," Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said.

"The EU is taking all necessary measures to mitigate the damage," he added.

A meeting will be held on Friday in Brussels and once the extent of the damage is known the EU will announce the amount of aid which it will send to Haiti, he added.

Earlier Wednesday the European Commission released three million euros in emergency aid for Haiti, where a 7.0 magnitude quake is feared to have killed thousands of people.

"It's the maximum we can go to in an emergency procedure. Of course we can add on to that in coming days," said a commission spokesman on humanitarian aid matters.