TriStar begins food flights

Press, 3 November 1984, Page 10

TriStar begins food flights

NZPA-AP Addis Ababa

An airlift of food and supplies large enough to strain the capacity of Ethiopia’s airports began yesterday in a world-wide battle against a famine that one Western diplomat predicted would kiU 900,000 people this year. The airlift began with the arrival at Addis Ababa, the capital, of a British Airways TriStar jet carrying 30 tonnes of food, medicine, and relief equipment.

Diplomats and representatives of relief agencies said that about 50 planes from Western and Communist countries would arrive during the airlift

“There’s a new group of planes almost every hour

being offered,” said one official.

Among countries that had offered aircraft for the airlift, sources said, were Britain, West Germany, Italy, South Yemen, the Soviet Union, East Germany and Bulgaria.

A consortium of European aid agencies was chartering a Hercules transport, they said. So many planes had been offered that there would be a problem accommodating them at Ethiopian airports. Three more Royal Air Force planes carrying famine relief supplies to Ethiopia had left yesterday after a 24-hour delay caused by a dispute over where the planes would land, a British spokesman said. Ethiopia's Relief and Re-

habilitation Commission estimates that a decadelong drought in the country has pushed more than six million people to the brink of starvation.

The commission has given no estimate of the number of deaths. A Western diplomat, who refused to be identified by name or nationality, said, “approximately 900,000 people will have died in this calendar year in Ethiopia.” As many as 1.8 million Ethiopians could starve in 1985, but that some 600,000 tonnes of food supplies from outside over the next year would reduce that figure, he said.

A Western aid organisation official, said that a death toll of 900,000 was possible this year. He emV

phasised that estimates were difficult to make because Ethiopia’s lack of roads and guerrilla insurgencies made much of the country inaccessible.

The President of the United States, Mr Ronald Reagan, has approved JUS4S.I million in emergency food aid for three other African countries — Kenya, Mozambique, and Man.

Ethiopian relief officials said that a Soviet relief effort was due to start on November 6, when 12 Antonov 12 transports and 24 helicopters arrived. The helicopters are to be based at the northern Ethiopian towns of Axum, Mekelle, Kembolcha, and Gondar, and will be used for short shuttle flights.