The World Health Organisation has summoned African governments to a crisis meeting in Zimbabwe to try to allay fears over genetically modified food as emergency relief.
The meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, is an attempt by the international agency to overcome the refusal of several famine-hit countries to accept GM food as humanitarian aid.
The WHO warned that 300,000 people could die of hunger and disease in the next six months. WHO officials said they would meet 10 southern African health ministers in Harare on Monday to consider a response to the "acute and large-scale crisis facing the region". Gro Harlem Brundtland, WHO director-general, will attend.
The US has supplied GM maize as part of an international effort to relieve the 14m people facing starvation in the region. While Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland have accepted the GM aid, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique have rejected it. The UN world food programme is stockpiling rejected grain and wants to distribute it as soon as possible.
Southern African countries fear GM maize poses a threat to their agricultural trade and might contaminate their locally produced grain, endangering exports. They have also raised concerns that the food is unfit for human use and has been "dumped" on them by the US.
On Wednesday, the US asked the European Union to reassure African governments that EU trade with the region would not be disrupted if they accepted donations of US GM grain. The US has offered to meet almost half the emergency food needs of southern Africa this year.
The US and the UN's World Food Programme have urged southern African countries to accept the aid rather than leave their people hungry. "The food we are providing is exactly the same food eaten by millions of Americans every day for over seven years," said a US official. "We have found no scientific evidence to suggest that these crops represent a danger for human consumption."
The Harare meeting is designed to focus attention on the famine in southern Africa on the first day of the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. US sources say they are worried the dispute over GM food aid is being used as a way to open up a debate on GM crops and biodiversity at the UN summit - which could hurt US commercial interests.
Six million Zimbabweans - half the population - face starvation in one of the region's worst hit countries. The effects of drought have been worsened by the disruption caused by President Robert Mugabe's land reforms, under which farmers are being evicted from their land. The World Bank has recommended that the lack of food security in Africa be addressed as a top priority at Johannesburg.:
