U.N. Turns to Djibouti in Aid Effort

The United Nations will spend millions of dollars developing Djibouti’s port and roads this year in an effort to bring in enough food to avert famine in Ethiopia, officials said Saturday.

Ethiopia’s war with Eritrea has complicated the relief effort, and the Ethiopian government’s refusal to permit the U.N. to ship food through the Eritrean port of Assab has forced the world organization to turn to Djibouti.

But officials are still concerned that the Djibouti port will be overwhelmed by the hundreds of thousands of tons of wheat needed to feed 8 million Ethiopians this year.

Work has already begun on a $2.7-million U.N. plan to increase the Red Sea port’s handling capacity to 145,000 tons a month from about 100,000 tons now.

A new plan to spend $4.2 million to upgrade the two main roads to Ethiopia was signed Friday, just a day after Ethiopia refused a U.N. request to allow the use of Assab.

Some food will be shipped in via the Somali port of Berbera, and the U.N. also will bring in 400 trucks from abroad to help distribute the food in Ethiopia.

“We are going to make a good-faith effort to make these ports work,” U.N. special envoy Catherine Bertini said in Djibouti. “But if they cannot produce enough, then we will go back to the government of Ethiopia” to ask officials to reconsider opposition to using Assab, she said.

Bertini, of the World Food Program, has been sent to the Horn of Africa by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to address the threat of famine that could affect as many as 16 million people in the region this year.