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Zimbabwe will not formally ask WFP for help-paper
Reuters
July 26, 2005

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L26349557.htm

HARARE, (Reuters) - Zimbabwe will not formally ask the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) for help despite a devastating drought that has left the country short of food, the official Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Secretary Lancaster Museka said the government still welcomed donor assistance.

"I do not think we will go that route (of a formal appeal to the UN). The government has indicated that about 1.8 million tonnes of maize are needed to feed the people countrywide. So based on that figure, any donor organisations that are willing to assist can come in with their assistance through the normal channels," the paper said, quoting Museka.

"But as we speak, the government is importing food from South Africa to feed the people," he said.

WFP director James Morris last month said Zimbabwe required several hundered thousand tonnes of food aid after meeting President Robert Robert Mugabe during a tour to assess the food situation in the region.

Mugabe told Morris the country welcomed food aid although Zimbabwe had not made clear how much it needed.

WFP spokesman Mike Huggins said Zimbabwe's decision not to formally ask for help had been expected and was not expected to have too great an impact on food delivery plans for the country.

"Zimbabwe's decision not to fomally request international assistance for those affected by the drought should not impact too greatly on our efforts to raise the necessary funds, but clearly it would be much easier to go forward with an open and transparent request from the government," Huggins said.

But he said the WFP was concerned about the humanitarian situation of all those displaced by Harare's urban demolition campaign -- which the U.N. estimates has left some 700,000 people without homes, livelihood or both -- and hoped to be able to expand its assistance to those people in the near future.

Zimbabwe's government has said it has already put in place measures to import the 1.8 million tonnes of maize to cover the grain deficit arising from the current drought.

Mugabe's government has previously accused aid agencies of driving a political agenda and last year said the Southern African country would not require aid amid forecasts of a bumper maize crop of 2.4 million tonnes, which later fizzled out after the drought.

Mugabe denies that the chronic food shortages that have hit the country for much of the last five years are largely due to disruptions to farming linked to his seizure of white-owned farms for landless blacks.

The shortages have worsened an economic crisis widely blamed on government mismanagement that has lasted for six years and manifesting in acute foreign currency shortages as well as record inflation and unemployment.

(additional reporting by Andrew Quinn in Johannesburg)

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