West asked to boost food aid

Press, 28 May 1981, Page 7

West asked to boost food aid

NZPA-Reutcr Novi Sad Developing countries yesterday called on industrialised nations to try to reach •agreed targets for aid to the poor. India, Morocco, Iraq,Colombia,- Pakistan and other delegations to the Ministerial meeting of the World Food Council in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, urged the West to double the 0.35 per cent of their gross national product which goes in aid to the poor. The sources said developing countries had become frustrated as recession in the

West had reduced the prospects of international cooperation. They said many developing countries had been particularly disappointed by a speech to the conference by the United States Agriculture Secretary (Mr John Block) who opposed the principle of using internationally-con-trolled food stocks to fight world hunger. Such stocks are a central point of international plans to ease hunger and malnutrition in the world, a task which the 36-member W.F.C. was set up to tackle.

Conference sources said another main issue emerging was the international wheat agreement, a much weakened attempt to regulate supplies of the world's most traded grain through reserve stocks and trigger prices that would release them on to the market.

Many countries at the Novi Sad meeting favoured agreeing to restart stalled talks next month when participating countries were due to meet in Madrid, they said. The sources said the one positive note in Mr Block’s speech was an indication

that the United States would attend the Madrid meeting when he said it should look at alternative proposals. The wheat agreement was originally designed to be the keystone of such accords that would ensure that food got to poor countries at prices they could afford, but dilutions of the original idea have meant this has not been achieved. The Indian Agriculture Minister (Mr Rao Birendra Singh) told a plenary session that if there was no agreement in Madrid to reopen talks on a wheat agreement “we should call it a day.”