From: vamg6792@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Mboboso)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african
Subject: UPI: Britain pledges $34 million for drought-plagued African nations
Date: 17 Aug 92 19:10:02 GMT
Article-I.D.: news.Bt56Kx.B1B
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana



	LONDON (UPI) -- The British government Monday announced plans to give
$34 million in food and relief to the drought- and war-stricken Horn of
Africa, bringing both praise from aid groups and criticism it took too
long to act.
	The aid package, assembled in response to the 1992 U.N. Special
Emergency Appeal for the Horn of Africa, was to go to Somalia, the
Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Kenya, the Overseas Development
Administration said in a statement.
	The region has been hit hard again this year by drought, but warring
clans have wracked Somalia particularly hard, with some 4.5 million
people in danger of starvation, and one person estimated to be dying
every minute.
	The British aid was to include $21 million for 45,000 tons of new
food aid and $13 million for other relief assistance, including $4
million for the work of British voluntary agencies working in the Horn
of Africa.
	Announcing the new aid pledge, Overseas Development Minister Lynda
Chalker said, ``Our new pledge will help make sure that food is
available during the critical months ahead.''
	A spokesman for the Save the Children's British headquarters in
London said his relief agency welcomed the announcement but was pleading
with Britain to do more in a political role by using its influence
through the rotating presidency of the European Community.
	Save the Children spokesman Don Redding said his group felt the major
political turning point in the West's attitude toward the current
devastation in Somalia was the 145,000 metric tons of food aid pledged
Friday by the United States, and said the entire EC now needed to follow
suit.
	``Save the Children has argued since start of '92 that the immediate
answer to Somalia is to innundate the country with food,'' he said. 
``The U.S. government's announcement last Friday was the first
indication that that argument was beginning to be accepted at
international levels, and political leaders are at last prepared to stop
dithering and save lives.''
	``It is time now for the EC to respond with an initiative to match,''
Redding said.
	Save the Children's director-general, Nicholas Hinton, wrote to
Chalker asking her to pressure the EC over Somalia through her capacity
as president of the EC Development Council, Redding said.
	Chalker appeared to back the sentiment in announcing the British
donation Monday, saying: ``I am determined that Britain will continue to
play its part, but it is vital that other donors also give generously to
this appeal.''
	The London-based development campaigning organization World
Development Movement also gave a mixed welcome to the British
initiative, saying the help was needed but long-delayed.
	The group's campaigns officer, Neil McCulloch, called the overall
international response to Somalia's famine ``utterly inadequate.''
	``There is a human catastrophe going on in the Horn of Africa which
has been largely ignored by the international community,'' McCulloch
said.
	Attention to the crisis was delayed by the focus on the ongoing war
in the former Yugoslav republics, McCulloch said. While that war was 
``an important political priority, the famine and suffering in Somalia
and other areas of Southern Africa has been largely ignored,'' he said.
	``In terms of human tragedy, what is happening in the Horn and in
Southern Africa is way above that happening in Yugoslavia, but it simply
hasn't received a political priority.
	``John Major didn't break off his holiday to cope with the crisis in
Somalia,'' McCulloch said, referring to the British prime minister's
weekend decision to cut short his vacation in Spain, reportedly to
consider the Yugoslav conflict.
	McCulloch said the British government should seek ways to remedy
Somalia's long-term problems by easing unfair trade practices involving
African countries and by reducing the area's debt to foreign banks.
	Sub-Saharan Africa now owes more than its entire gross domestic
product to foreign commercial banks, governments and the World Bank, he
said.
	``The onus is upon Major to propose a radical initiative to defer and
then ultimately wipe out the debt of very poor Sub-Saharan and East
Africa,'' he said.
	A spokesman for the British Overseas Development Administration said
the ODA had been giving aid as a ``constant thing'' since the start of
the crisis in early 1991.
	The department has given $32 million to Somalia since 1991, and this
year it gave 19,000 tons of food, as well as 5,000 tons of food through
the U.N. appeal for Somalia, and $5 million to the Red Cross for its
relief activities there.
	``For months we've really been at the forefront of giving money to
Somalia,'' the ODA spokesman said.
	The package announced Monday brought Britain's total U.N. aid to the
famine-stricken African countries to more than $92 million, and its
overall total of bilateral humanitarian aid to more than $190 million,
including 170,000 tons of food aid.
	The country also gave another $47 million as Britain's share of the
European Community's Special Food Aid Program for Africa in 1992.