"Oh, really!" said a wheat exporter when told that the Commodity Credit Corp. announced earlier Thursday it would launch a tender on Sept. 27 to buy the wheat for Afghanistan.

"That's really interesting," said another exporter after laughing out loud when told the news.

A CCC spokeswoman said tenders set by the agency are based on orders from the U.S. Agriculture Department in Washington, but did not elaborate.

"The American public is going to look at this as giving food to who the government has been telling us is harboring the person that is responsible for this attack," said Shawn McCambridge, grain analyst at brokerage Prudential Securities.

The tender announcement comes in the wake of a statement by the United Nations world food body, the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization, that military action against Afghanistan would worsen the food crisis in the country.

An official of the United Nations' World Food Program said Wednesday that U.S. food aid to Afghanistan was continuing, even though the Central Asian nation had not yet turned over bin Laden and members of his Al Qaeda network
wanted in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Terry Francl, senior economist of the American Farm Bureau, the largest U.S. agricultural organization, said: "As I indicated this week, they (the Bush
administration) are going to play their cards."


U.S. President George W. Bush Wednesday demanded Afghanistan's rulers hand over bin Laden.

The United States has deployed dozens of bombers, fighters and support aircraft to the Middle East and Indian Ocean as part of an effort to get its military into position to punish those it holds responsible for the Sept. 11
plane attacks that left nearly 6,000 people dead or missing.

Seeking to stave off a U.S. attack, Afghan clerics earlier Thursday urged bin Laden to leave Afghanistan -- an overture rejected by Washington.

"An already grave food crisis in Afghanistan caused by prolonged drought and civil strife can be expected to worsen if the threat of military action materializes," the FAO said in a statement Thursday.

"Recent estimates put the number of vulnerable people inside Afghanistan at about six million, nearly one quarter of the population," the FAO said, referring to people severely threatened by food shortages.

The United States is the biggest donor to the World Food Program's $76 million program to feed 3.5 million people in Afghanistan through March 2002, according to the agency.

Just before the attacks, the Bush Administration pledged 100,000 tonnes of food in addition to the 65,000 tonnes currently being sent to poverty-stricken Afghans, WFP said.

The United States donated 240,000 tonnes of wheat to Afghanistan during fiscal 2001 that ends on Sept. 30, up from the previous year's 135,000 tonnes, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department.



***NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes****