Hunger battle on food summit menu

Nearly 13 million people are on the verge of starvation in six southern African countries

ROME, Italy -- Representatives from more than 180 countries are attending a United Nations' Food Summit aimed at rekindling the political will to combat hunger.

The last such summit in 1996 vowed to halve the number of the world's hungry from 840 million to 400 million by 2015.

But despite being a third of the way in to that timetable the number of hungry has only dropped by 25 million, with war, natural disasters and indifference taking their toll.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) hopes the four-day event, in Rome, will act as a spur to initial hopes.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told an Italian newspaper that it was unacceptable that there were some 800 million people who were still going to bed hungry every night.

MORE STORIES • Q&A The food summit  • 'Distaste' at Mugabe's presence    HUNGER FACTS • About 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water   • 55% of the 12 million child deaths annually are malnutrition-related   • 20% of people in the developing world are chrobically undernourished   • 815 million people suffer hunger and malnourishment   SOURCE: FAO    QUICKVOTE Is there the political will to slash world hunger? Yes No View Results

"The World Food Summit is not just a meeting of governments it is also an opportunity to raise the awareness of ordinary people to the food emergency," he told La Repubblica daily.

Opening the summit on Monday, Annan urged greater access for the world's farmers to land, credit, markets and technology -- including technology to help them grow more resistant crops.

"There is no shortage of food on the planet," Annan said.

"But while some countries produce more than they need to feed their people, others do not, and many of these cannot afford to import enough to make up the gap."

Italy's President Silvio Berlusconi told the conference: "A hungry man is not a free man. Freedom from hunger is a fundamental right. Without this freedom, such fundamental right cannot exist."

However, the absence of several major nations threatened to limit the summit's ability to call for billions of extra dollars to be pumped into farm and development aid.

Jacques Diouf, secretary general of the FAO, condemned wealthy nations for showing scant regard for the plight of the hungry.

Diouf, of Senegal, said his view was borne out by the fact that only two of the 29 OECD countries -- host Italy and current European Union president Spain -- were being represented at the highest government level.

By contrast, many African leaders like South African President Thabo Mbeki and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo are at the summit, as is Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, who skirted a European Union travel ban to be there.

The EU has placed a bilateral ban on Mugabe visiting member states as a result of recent elections in Zimbabwe which were condemned as unfair.

But the ban does not apply to Mugabe travelling to meetings chaired by international organisations. (Full Story)

European Union spokesman Gunnar Wiegand though went as far as to say that Mugabe's presence was "distasteful."

"It is distasteful to the president of Zimbabwe giving the impression he is really caring about the poverty and the provision of food of his people," when Mugabe has refused food aid on political ground, Wiegand said.

An estimated 12.8 million people in six southern African countries are at risk of starvation because of drought, floods, government mismanagement and economic instability.

Pope John Paul II on Sunday cited the crisis in Angola in particular for help and called on summit delegates to "give new impulse to the fight of the international community against hunger."

In order to hit the 1996 goal, FAO is seeking an additional $24 billion a year in agricultural and rural investment.

At present, overseas development assistance from wealthier countries totals about$68 billion, of which only $11 billion is earmarked for agriculture, against about $15 billion spent on farming in 1988.