(Recasts with details from appeal, Holmes quotes)

By Laura MacInnis GENEVA, Nov 19 (Reuters) - The United Nations on Wednesday asked for a record $7 billion to help 30 million people recover from disasters and conflict in the coming year, stressing the global financial crisis did not justify cuts to foreign aid.

The 2009 humanitarian appeal is the largest in the U.N.'s history and coincides with a credit crunch that has strained the budgets of traditional donor governments such as the United States, France and Britain.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said economic stormclouds did not let the international community off the hook for dealing with emergencies in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, and other stricken states.

"The global financial crisis has raised inevitable concerns that there could be a decline in humanitarian funding for 2009. I urge member states and private donors not to let that happen," he wrote in a foreword to the fundraising document.

"I appeal for $7 billion to be provided without delay and as a top priority," Ban said.

Humanitarian aid has fallen far short of U.N. requests in the past decade, even in periods of strong economic growth.

GOVERNMENT SHORTFALLS

Between 2000 and 2008, governments provided 48 to 67 percent of the sums sought in appeals covering projects by U.N. agencies and its partners such as Oxfam and CARE International.

Last year, the U.N. initially asked for $3.8 billion and then made extra requests amounting to $3.2 billion to respond to natural disasters and soaring food prices. It received just $4.7 billion of that $7 billion total.

The latest appeal spans 31 countries, mostly in Africa and the Middle East.

The U.N. is seeking $2.2 billion for Sudan, $919 million for Somalia, $831 million for the Democratic Republic of Congo, $550 million for Zimbabwe, $547 million for Iraq and its neighbours, and $462 million for the occupied Palestinian territory.

John Holmes, the U.N.'s emergency relief coordinator, said that while the financial crisis is widely expected to pinch aid budgets in the coming year, no such decrease has been seen yet.

"That fear is not a reality at the moment, and we hope it will not become a reality," he told journalists at the U.N.'s European headquarters in Geneva, where the appeal was launched.

Compared to the huge corporate bailouts promised in the wake of the U.S. banking crisis, Holmes said the amounts needed to save lives and prevent disease were minuscule.

"The $7 billion that we seek equates to, for every $100 of national income in the rich countries, only a few cents of aid," he said.

As a percentage of economic output, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Monaco, Luxembourg and Sweden were the top five humanitarian aid donors in 2008, according to U.N. figures. (Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

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