A donors' conference on rebuilding the parts of Pakistan devastated by October's earthquake will focus on longer term regeneration as well as immediate humanitarian needs, the head of the UNDP said on Wednesday. U.N. Development Programme Administrator Kemal Dervis told Reuters shelter would be a top priority at a Nov. 19 meeting in the Pakistani capital Islamabad but that agencies had to start discussing how to build employment and infrastructure as well. "The economic devastation that comes with the physical devastation should not be underestimated," Dervis said. "It is not just a physical reconstruction effort but also an effort of generating economic activity that can then lead to a self-sustaining kind of situation in the medium term." The Oct. 8 earthquake killed more than 73,000 people in Pakistan and about 1,300 in India. Dervis declined to give an estimate of how much reconstruction would cost, saying assessments by the World Bank and UNDP would be ready "in two or three days". --More 2218 Local Time 1918 GMT
