World Food Summit 2002 -- What the experts said
2002-06-13 10:32:44 GMT (Reuters)
ROME, June 13 (Reuters) - A World Food Summit sponsored by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) ended on Thursday after four days of speeches and controversy.
The following is a taste of what was said at a meeting which renewed a pledge to halve world hunger by 2015.
"In a world of plenty, ending hunger is within our grasp. Failure to reach this goal should fill every one of us with shame. The time for making promises is over. It is time to act." U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.
"At the moment of truth, six years after the World Food Summit of 1996, death continues to stalk the multitude of hungry on our planet. Promises have not been kept; worse, actions have not reflected words." FAO Director General Jacques Diouf.
"Jacques Diouf is contributing to the continuation of the old inertia by asking for more money instead of asking what really needs to be done." EU Aid Commissioner Poul Nielson.
"The entire leadership of Western Europe and North America was here in Rome two weeks ago to discuss NATO. They all came without exception, but they don't come now.
"I suppose that's because they don't think the problem of 800 million people going hungry in the world is important." South African President Thabo Mbeki.
"I'm not sending a minister because I don't expect it to be an effective summit. It's an old-fashioned U.N. organisation and it needs improvement." Clare Short, Britain's overseas development secretary explaining why Britain snubbed the summit.
"We are poor, you are rich. Level the playing field." Philippines Vice-president Teofisto Guingona urging an end to First World farm subsidies.
"Africa is dead with debt and under investment. We need to wipe that away before we can go forward, otherwise it is going to be a rough ride for Africa." Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi.
"The ideologies of terror spring up precisely where you find hunger, misery and poverty." Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
"France is not here... Europe is not here, the United States is not here. All these countries don't care about this. What they want is to sell more food to the southern countries, they don't want these people to have their own agriculture to feed their own population." French rebel farmer Jose Bove.
"There is a blindness in the world's approach to tackling hunger and it is a blindness that ignores the Third World's knowledge, ignores indigenous knowledge and ignores the knowledge of women." Vandana Shiva, Indian scientist and gender equality advocate.
"If women all over the world had the same opportunities as men, then we could get rid of world hunger." Swedish Agriculture Minister Margareta Winberg.
"Zimbabwe's land must rightly belong to Zimbabweans. Contrary to widely disseminated misrepresentation by our detractors, there is now a brighter future for our farming community." Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who has backed a land grab from white farmers.
"I am uncomfortable when any head of state that is tyrannical and predatory comes to a conference like this, and he (Mugabe) fits that category." Andrew Natsios, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development.