Africa Dominates Famine Summit

Dozens of world leaders will open a UN food summit in Rome today to try to generate money and momentum for a flagging attempt to halve the number of hungry people in the world.

The president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, was expected to steal much of the attention after sidestepping an EU exclusion order by using his entitlement under international law to attend UN summits.

Warnings that a major famine could devastate southern Africa gave a sense of urgency to the event. Delegates are expected to demand an extra £16bn a year in agricultural and rural investment from developed countries.

The gathering is a sequel to a 1996 summit which vowed to more than halve the number of hungry people by 2015, from 840 million to 400 million. Five years later the number has dipped only to 815 million, according to UN statistics, a failure which could mean the good will of the first summit is replaced by blame and recriminations.

"In this era of global abundance, why does the world continue to tolerate the daily hunger and deprivation of more than 800 million people?" asked Jacques Diouf, director general of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which is hosting the three-day summit.

The problem was not lack of food - there was plenty for everyone - but getting it to those in need, Mr Diouf said.

More than 100 heads of state and ministers are expected to reaffirm pledges to cut the number of hungry to 400 million. Five years ago this pledge was denounced, by Fidel Castro of Cuba among others, as shameful but in hindsight appears over-ambitious.

War, droughts, floods and policy blunders by developed and developing countries, as well as the UN, have been blamed.

The UN's World Food Programme said almost 13 million people in six southern African states, including Zimbabwe, risked starving to death without more food aid.

Mr Mugabe, whose policy of encouraging militants to seize white-owned farms has been blamed for crippling a once-productive economy, will meet the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, and Nigeria's president, Olusegun Obasanjo.

"No one has any doubt that the presence of someone against whom a travel ban has imposed is distasteful. But we accept the EU partners are bound by international treaty obligations," a British Foreign Office spokesman said.

Most of the heads of state will be from poor countries. Western nations have chosen to send mostly medium-ranked delegations.

A proposed non-binding resolution calling for the development of a voluntary code of conduct on "the right to adequate food for all" was predicted to provoke opposition from the US delegation on the grounds that it might undermine the American embargo on Cuba.

Protesters who are holding a parallel food summit on the outskirts of Rome want to put access to markets for poor farmers and the use of genetically modified food on the agenda. Several thousand marched at a peaceful, heavily policed rally in Rome on Saturday.

Vittorio Agnoletto, the leader of last July's protests at the G8 summit in Genoa, said the movement was still strong despite Saturday's turnout being far lower than the 50,000 organisers predicted. Groups wanting to provoke confrontations during the food summit have criticised him and others for advocating strictly peaceful methods.

While lunching at a restaurant in Rome yesterday, Mr Agnoletto was sheltered by police after appearing to be threatened by several young men.