U.S. to Send 62,000 Tons of Food Aid to Mozambique

The Reagan Administration has approved an emergency $19.2-million food package for Mozambique and is considering another $28 million in aid, a spokesman for the U.S. Agency for International Development said Friday.

The United States will send 62,000 metric tons of wheat, corn, rice and dry milk to Mozambique, where an estimated 3.5 million people are in urgent need of food. Another 88,000 metric tons will be sent if a committee of officials from various Administration agencies approves it, AID press spokesman John Metelsky said.

Mozambique suffered severe drought in 1984 and 1985, but AID Director M. Peter McPherson said last week that the country’s problems have been caused by a “political disaster, not a disaster made by Mother Nature.”

More than 2.1 million of the people in need live in areas controlled by the South African-backed Mozambique National Resistance, McPherson said. The guerrillas, seeking to undercut the Marxist Mozambique government and its economic development programs, have hampered relief efforts in drought-stricken areas.

“Food has not been planted because of the war in many places, and distribution has been greatly inhibited because of the war,” said McPherson of AID, which provides economic and humanitarian assistance to developing Third World countries. “For some people, the situation is very bad.”