Jun 3, 2008, 18:07 GMT
Rome - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged world leaders attending a summit in Rome Tuesday to lift trade restrictions, taxes and other price controls that have helped spur food prices to their highest levels in 30 years.
'You all know the severity of the global food crisis... I have seen it for myself. In Liberia recently, I met people who normally would buy rice by the bag. Today, they buy it by the cup,' Ban said.
He was addressing delegates from some 50 countries, including dozens of heads of state and government, at the UN Conference on World Food Security's inaugural ceremony.
Ban stressed the need to eliminate trade and taxation policies that 'distort markets' but said such 'parallel' tracks should not distract donors from the 'immediate needs' of some 850 million people who face hunger.
The three-day summit, hosted by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), is aimed at winning donor pledges for urgent aid as well as forging an agreement to revive a 1996 pledge by a world leaders to halve the number of hungry people by 2015.
'The time for talking is long past. Now is the time for action,' FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said in his summit address.
FAO has listed 22 countries that are particularly vulnerable owing to a combination of high levels of chronic hunger - defined as more than 30 per cent undernourishment - and being net importers of both food and fuel. Countries such as Eritrea, Niger, Comoros, Haiti and Liberia are particularly affected.
The UN says an emergency aid package should consist of direct food distribution, food subsidies and cash transfers, as well as feeding programmes for schoolchildren, pregnant women and the elderly.
Those emergency measures would require 775 million dollars, according to a donor appeal issued by another Rome-based UN agency, the World Food Programme.
Ban said a UN-coordinated task force has identified several recommendations to counter price increases.
These included the distribution of seeds, fertilizers, animal feed and other inputs for small-scale farmers through vouchers or other forms of subsidies. FAO says 1.7 billion dollars in donor aid would be required.
The UN is also expected to try to persuade the United States and other nations to consider phasing out subsidies for food-based biofuels that currently act as incentives for farmers to switch their production away from food.
According to FAO biofuels, or ethanol, accounted for about one third of maize production in the United States and over half of sugarcane production in Brazil and rapeseed production in the European Union.
But in his speech to the summit, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for the clearing of 'smokescreens raised by powerful lobbies who try to blame ethanol production' for the food price hike.
Lula said a combination of factors pushed up prices, including climate change, speculation on financial markets and growing food consumption in developing countries like China, India, Brazil and others.
But above the 'maintenance of absurdly protectionist farm policies in rich countries' were to blame, according to the Brazilian president.
From the start, the summit's proceedings risked being overshadowed by controversy around the attendance of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe.
And the Iranian president, on his first visit to a European Union nation since his election in 2005, reiterated at a news conference his views against 'doomed' Israel and the for the defeat of the United States in the 'illegal occupation' of Iraq.
Earlier in his speech to summit delegates, Ahmadinejad began by reciting a a Muslim prayer and presented a set of proposals he said would help solve the food crisis, including expanding the rule of 'ethical and humanistic values.'
He also called for the need of what he described as 'the coming to power of pure and monotheistic managers,' an apparent reference to Islam and Muslims.
Mugabe, who is in Rome with his wife Grace, has been allowed to circumvent a European Union travel ban on him and about 200 members of his ruling elite, because of a loophole that permits them to attend UN meetings.
In his speech at the summit, the Zimbabwe leader blamed the West for his country's economic woes and food shortages that most observers say started in 2000 when land was seized from white farmers to be given to Mugabe's political supporters.
He accused Britain together with 'allies in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand' of attempting an 'illegal regime change' in Zimbabwe.
The UN Conference on World Food Security is scheduled to run through Thursday.
View blog reactions
If you liked this story please support M&C and Buzz the site on Yahoo.
There are currently no comments for this article. Be the first to comment! (no registration required)
Advertising
There are currently no comments for this article. Be the first to comment! (no registration required)