United Nations, Sep 22 (TIWN) The UN now has all the funds needed to start an emergency operation to prevent a massive oil spill from the derelict Safer oil tanker in the Red Sea off Yemen.

He said the donation has surpassed the required $75 million.  The UN Development Programme is actively working on the first contracts to initiate the salvage operation.  There will be a period of a few weeks of mobilization for that, followed by a four-month operation to stabilize the Safer for the work to transfer oil to a second vessel, and then for completing the work of phase two -- a permanent storage solution, said Gressly.  The progress was announced after a high-level event on the Safer tanker, co-chaired by the Netherlands, the US and Germany, on Wednesday.  To begin work on the emergency operation as soon as possible, the UN needs donors to convert all of the pledges to cash.  As of Sunday, $59 million had been disbursed or was in the process of being disbursed.  The UN also needs a further $38 million for phase two.  The original budget for the plan was reduced by $31 million largely because of the adoption of a double-hull vessel tethered to a buoy system as the safe long-term solution.  The system is the fastest to implement and most flexible of the three long-term replacement options that were considered, according to the UN.