A massive drought threatens to cause a new famine in the Horn of Africa

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (CNN) -- A massive drought threatens to cause a new famine in the Horn of Africa, particularly Ethiopia, and international aid is urgently needed to save 15 million people in eight
countries, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Thursday.

"If we move and move quickly, we can contain the situation, and this is why we are making the appeal," Annan told a news conference at the World Food Program headquarters in Rome.

Annan named World Food Program Executive Director Catherine Bertini as special envoy to investigate ways to stave off the looming disaster. She will visit the region April 11-19 to determine what relief measures to
take.
Aid agencies say widespread famine is just weeks away unless massive aid comes now. Officials say 18 million people, including 10 million in Ethiopia, are at risk.

"We have to have the pledges confirmed now, we have to have the ships on the high seas immediately," said Judith Lewis, the WFP's chief in Ethiopia. "Everything's got to be in the works now."

The Ethiopian government has complained that the Western world is waiting to see "living skeletons" before it acts. In 1984-1985, a famine in the same region was blamed for the deaths of 1 million people.

Heading off donor fatigue

Annan said a million tons of food are needed. The United States has pledged to send 480,000 tons of food for all of Africa this year.  Asked whether donor nations may be becoming "fatigued" by Africa's many
disasters, Annan said, "The fatigue may be there, but I don't think we can justify it in the face of such misery. We may need to wake up our conscience and our conscience must force us to act."

Annan, in Rome to kick off a two-day meeting with the directors of U.N. agencies, said he also would discuss famine aid in his meeting Friday with Pope John Paul II.

Annan termed 1992's U.N. intervention in Somalia a success, despite the fact that several U.N. peacekeepers were killed when they became embroiled in local power struggles.

"Three months after the aid arrived, three months after the peacekeepers had arrived, there were no more walking skeletons," he said. "Many lives were saved, and many people were helped."

Another hard year for Ethiopia

Most of those at risk are in Ethiopia, where three years of drought have left crops withering in the ground, the World Food Program said.  The WFP is trying to arrange a second airlift of biscuits, oil and
vehicles. The United States provided an earlier airlift of high-protein biscuits.

The European Union has promised aid, and Canada on Wednesday pledged $6.25 million Canadian dollars ($4.28 million U.S.).  The WFP says that in some parts of Ethiopia, it has had to cut its
normal famine aid distributions from 15 kilograms (33 pounds) of wheat per person per month to 12.5 kilograms (27.5 pounds) per month per family.

Even those receiving aid are getting so little that many have turned to drastic measures to survive, such as eating roots, or selling goats and chickens that are their only long-term dependable source of food, Lewis
said.

"The people we are giving assistance to are going to be in a weakened state. They're very vulnerable," she said.  Food stocks already on hand will run out in June, meaning millions will
go without food entirely unless the aid gets under way now, Lewis said.

Forget war, think food, U.S.says

Western leaders say the 22-month-long border conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea is slowing delivery of famine aid.  A top U.S. humanitarian official on Wednesday urged both countries to set
aside their differences and focus on getting food to the needy.

"I would just hope that the two sides could figure out some way, in the midstof their conflict over other things, to consider the humanitarian needs that are so severe, particularly in the southern part of Ethiopia," Hugh Parmer of the U.S. Agency for International Development said.

On April 1 an Ethiopian foreign affairs statement dismissed a proposal by Eritrea to use its port of Assab to deliver food aid as a public relations gimmick.

Ethiopia stopped using Eritrea's ports of Assab and Massawa after war broke out in May 1998, diverting trade to Djibouti.  It accused Eritrea of looting 50,000 tons of U.S.-donated food grain and
other relief items to feed its army.

Parmer said he had urged Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to agree, if asked by a U.N. agency, to create a humanitarian corridor from Assab, on the Red Sea,
through the battle lines.

The response, Parmer said, "was probably less than enthusiastic, although on the Eritrean side, they did indicate that at least they had no objection in principle."

Most vulnerable already dying Parmer said that when he was in Gode in Ethiopia he saw hundreds of women and children lined up to qualify for food aid.

He said one woman holding a baby under her arm told him: "I had three of them when I arrived here two months ago. Two of them have died."

The situation in southern Ethiopia in general was very close to famine, Parmer said. "I guess I would distinguish it from an actual famine only because at this point only the most vulnerable, the children and the
elderly, are dying."