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UN chief arrives for talks on hunger, soaring prices

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday held talks with key development agencies on how to tackle the crisis provoked by soaring food and fuel prices.

“This is an exciting time for the United Nations, but it is also a time when we are challenged to exert our best efforts to rise to the expectations that the world is placing on us,” Ban said ahead of meetings in the Swiss capital.

The UN was to hammer out a plan of emergency measures at the two-day conference in Berne, while exploring other longer-term measures to solve the food crisis.

The talks were expected to see advocates of protectionism face off against those who favor opening up markets, as well as arguments between both supporters and opponents of biofuels.

Rising populations, strong demand from developing countries, increased cultivation of crops for biofuels and increasing floods and droughts have sent food prices soaring across the globe.

In Geneva, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food said on Monday that WTO efforts to rush trade liberalization talks work against those who are starving.

Jean Ziegler, whose mandate ends today, also called for the suspension of bio-fuel production that he accused of being one of the causes of the sharp increase in food prices.

“The line taken by Pascal Lamy [director general of the WTO] is completely against the interests of people dying of hunger because it’s exactly the protectionist taxes that allow farmers to cultivate food crops,” he said.

According to the WTO, “agricultural subsidies of rich countries have destroyed agriculture of poor countries, and a more open system would result in less distortion.”

Speaking to the press in Geneva, Ziegler said that Ban’s meeting with the leaders of UN agencies in Berne later in the day was to be “an essential day for hungry people around the world.”

He also criticized the IMF, which he claimed has “imposed on the poorest countries” the cultivation of non-food products, thereby further cutting down on the cultivation of food produce.

He welcomed IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s “reversal” on the subject and called on governments to “put a priority on the cultivation of food produce.”



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