Nearly 1.5 million refugees and asylum seekers are likely to try to flee from Iraq, and 30% of the country’s children under five “would be at risk of death from malnutrition” in the case of war on Iraq, according to a secret United Nations planning document.

The estimates were made by all the top UN agencies, from the World Health Organisation to Unicef and the World Food Programme. They give an even bleaker picture of the looming humanitarian catastrophe than UN assessments made last December.

The plans have been kept secret, as no war has been authorised, but the document says: “UN agencies and country teams have been engaged in a discreet planning and preparedness effort for several months.”

Ominously, it reveals that in spite of requests to the United States, Britain, and other western governments for emergency aid in case of war “no funds have been made available to any agencies to date”.

As a result, UN agencies have not yet reached “even minimum levels of preparedness”, it says.

The document, labelled “confidential” and dated January 7 2003, was obtained by an American non-governmental organisation and is posted on the website of the Campaign against Sanctions on Iraq (www.casi.org.uk).

The UN bases its figures on the scenario of a war lasting up to three months. Ten million Iraqis would be “highly food insecure, displaced, or directly affected by military action”, according to the World Food Programme.

Existing aid schemes would stop, as UN staff would be evacuated. About 30% of Iraqi babies are already born with low birth weight because their mothers are going short of food. These babies will be “much more vulnerable to death and under-development”, the confidential document says.

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