KABUL (AP) - Medecins Sans Frontieres pressed ahead Thursday with its plan to leave Afghanistan because of deteriorating security, but offered hope to dismayed government officials that it could make a swift return.

The medical relief agency, also known as Doctors Without Borders, said Wednesday it was quitting because the government failed to act against a warlord suspected in the June 2 slaughter of five of its staff, illustrating how violence has impeded humanitarian aid.

President Hamid Karzai said he regretted the group's decision and insisted his government was "fully committed" to investigating the killing. A UN spokesman said Thursday it also hoped MSF would return soon.

But Huub Verhagen, head of mission for the group's main French section, said Karzai's assurances were insufficient.

"We hope there will actually be a good followup" in the investigation, Verhagen said. "People have always expressed their willingness, but it never came to action."

In another setback, MSF's appeal to the Taliban to recognize its neutrality fell on deaf ears.

"Some NGOs like MSF say they are helping the Afghan people, but behind they are supporting U.S. policy, they are spies," Abdul Hakim Latifi, a purported Taliban spokesman, told AP. "We'll give them no guarantees."

On Thursday, members of MSF's 80 foreign staff were unplugging computers in its main Kabul office and preparing to leave the country. The red-and-white logos of the agency, which had been in Afghanistan for 24 years, were already gone from the gate.

Many programs have already been handed to the government and other relief groups in a pullback to be completed next month. A hospital in the capital, for instance, has passed to the health ministry with three months' supply of drugs.

Still, the group will continue to pay the rent on its deserted headquarters "to have an easy possibility to come back," Verhagen said.

The killing of five MSF staff - three Europeans and two Afghans - in northwestern Badghis province was the deadliest for any international aid agency since the fall of the Taliban, and brought to more than 30 the number of relief workers killed in the country since March 2003.

Latifi, the Taliban spokesman, claimed responsibility at the time.

But MSF officials said Wednesday that the Afghan interior minister told them of "credible evidence" that a former local security chief ordered the slayings in protest at his ouster.

That the former official, who wasn't identified, was neither arrested nor denounced "sends a message that it is acceptable to kill aid workers," Kenny Gluck, MSF's director of operations, told reporters Wednesday.

On Thursday, calls to spokesmen for Karzai and his interior minister went unanswered.

MSF also accused the U.S. military of making relief workers targets by running its own aid projects. American and NATO troops have begun setting up clinics, digging wells and supplying schools in an attempt to win support - and intelligence - from ordinary Afghans.

The U.S. military said the protests were misguided.

"We don't put anyone in danger," spokesman Maj. Jon Siepmann said. Some aid groups were working effectively alongside American troops, he said. Others "need to direct their concern towards the Taliban, towards al-Qaida."

r

ap- w

BC-WEA-France-Heat-Wave

code:4

CP International, Health, Politics

French hospitals understaffed again this summer, doctor warns

PARIS (AP) - Up to 30 per cent of hospital beds may be unavailable for patients during France's traditional holiday time despite painful lessons learned from last summer's deadly heat wave, a prominent emergency physician said Thursday.

Nearly 15,000 people died during the 2003 heat wave, partly because the weeks-long hot spell struck in August when many French go on vacation. Hospitals, operating with reduced staffs, were overwhelmed.

"There are as many hospital beds closed as last year," said Patrick Pelloux, the head of an association of emergency room doctors. "If we are faced with the same massive influx (of patients) as last year, we will have the same difficulties."

Pelloux, who was among the first to raise the alarm that last summer's heat wave was causing casualties, conducted a survey of summer staffing at French hospitals, which have been hit by budget cuts on top of traditional vacations.

Overall, the survey found 20 per cent to 30 per cent fewer beds available for the summer.

In the Paris area and in parts of the Brittany coast, like the towns of Quimper and Brest, there were "more beds closed (this summer) than last year," Pelloux said.

But in the Breton towns of Vannes and St. Brieuc there was no decrease from previous seasons.

In Bordeaux and other areas of the southwest, the figures were roughly the same as during the summer of 2003.

The government has touted what it calls a "heat wave plan" that pledged greater vigilance and supplied money for awareness campaigns and air conditioning at retirement homes and hospitals. But critics say the funding was often diverted for other urgent health care services.