Famine in Ethiopia 'worse than 1984'

The Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, said yesterday the famine threatening his country could be worse than that in 1984, which killed a million people and triggered a global relief effort.

Mr Meles told BBC radio that the number affected by the famine in 1984-85 "was roughly a third to one half of the number of people involved now". He added: "So if that was a nightmare, this will be too ghastly to contemplate."

Mr Meles appealed urgently for international aid for the Horn of Africa country. He said the drought was unique because of the failure of both the short rains, which begin in February, and the long rains, starting in June.

He said some six million people already needed food aid and the number facing starvation could rise to 15 million in the coming months if international donors did not respond.

Ethiopia wanted food aid in "huge amounts" to avoid catastrophe. "That is going to be in the realm of hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions," he said.

The Red Cross appealed yesterday for $11m (£7m) in aid for the stricken country. The World Food Programme warned of the impending disaster at the end of last month, calling for immediate help in providing and distributing 800,000 tons of food needed in Ethiopia and neighbouring Eritrea by next year.

Poor spring and autumn rains have meant an almost complete loss of Eritrea's cereal harvest and widespread crop losses in Ethiopia, where the 1984 famine prompted the Band Aid campaign of charity records and concerts organised by Bob Geldof.

Relief workers point out that even though the weather can be blamed for the current crisis, governments are not completely blameless.

In 1984, the effects of the drought were aggravated by Ethiopia's war with Eritrea, which was fighting for independence. Now, the two countries have only just emerged from an expensive hi-tech border war, once famously described as "two bald men fighting over a comb".

Andrew Pendleton, a Christian Aid spokesman, said the long-term problem for Ethiopia was that 30 million people would always be at risk because of chronic poverty. He said a chronic lack of infrastructure in rural areas had also contributed to the scale of the disaster.