NITA BHALLA  MORE than 260 charities on Monday urged banks not to finance a $3.5 billion oil pipeline in East Africa, concerned the project could lead to the loss of community land and livelihoods, environmental destruction and surging carbon emissions. France's Total and China National Offshore Oil Corporation are due to start work soon on a 1,445-km (900-mile) pipeline from western Uganda through neighbouring Tanzania to the Indian Ocean port of Tanga. About two thirds of the pipeline's cost will be financed by debt, and a Ugandan unit of South Africa's Standard Bank Group , Japan's Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp and the…