Egyptian president addresses food security conference in Rome

This meeting is held while the world is going through hard times; as it is facing an acute economic crisis, strong inflation waves and unprecedented increase in the prices of basic foodstuffs, energy and raw materials.

The current crisis presents many problems that are intertwined in their economic, social and environment aspects and reflect negatively on levels of economic growth and living standards in both developed and developing countries. Despite this intertwinement in the aspects and causes of this crisis, we have to admit that the biggest part of its repercussions is, especially, shouldered by the developing countries and African countries, in particular.

The issue of food security is the most dangerous stage of this crisis, the phase that is influenced most by its repercussions and the stage affecting most the developing countries' efforts to achieve the millennium development goals. We have to remember that achieving food security was the first target of these goals that we adopted eight years ago. Today, we meet at this important conference while the issue of food security is facing a difficult challenge imposed by the steady increase in foodstuffs' prices and the decline in the international reserve of these commodities to its lowest level since the 1970s. The FAO has called for increasing this reserve from 14 per cent to 19 per cent of the total world production. And with our due respect to the soundness of this proposal in the long-term, its repercussion in the short-term will lead to exacerbating the current crisis and will create more pressure on the demand side; hence, leading to more increase in prices.

Today, we meet when this crisis has caused economic problems and social unrest in several developing countries; in addition to its harmful effects on the FAO's activities, the World Food Programme and the agriculture track of the WTO's Doha round.

Our views of the causes of the current crisis and means of its confrontation may vary; however, what joins us is our conviction that we are facing a global phenomenon that requires international action to deal with it and contain its repercussions.

We welcome the working group formed by the UN Secretary-General and look forward to the strategy that will be drawn up to handle this crisis. However, the issue, in our estimation, requires expansion of dialogue to go beyond this, inside and outside the UN to include Bretton Woods, World Trade Organization and regional groupings in both developed and developing worlds.

The world is facing a joint challenge that witnesses the interlinking of the issues of food, energy and water security and the issues of climate change and bioenergy in addition to all the subsequent problems and options.

This conference is not a place for exchanging accusations between the developed and developing countries or to blame one another over the reasons for the current crisis. Rather, it is a chance for dialogue and crystallization of a global contribution to handle this joint challenge.

I call for a global contribution to deal with the reasons for the current crisis and its repercussions in a way that achieves the interests of both developed and developing countries; a global contribution that goes beyond policies, attitudes and interests in their narrow national perspectives so that this contribution will deal with the people's food security more comprehensively, given its relation with the fixed human right to food and life; a global contribution that witnesses our joint efforts on the national, regional and international levels to contain this crisis and stop the mounting rise in food prices.

I renew my call for an urgent international dialogue, which I advocated in my speech in the Davos Economic Forum in Sharm al-Shaykh last month; a dialogue that includes food and energy exporters and importers from developed and developing countries alike in order to draw up an international strategy to face the current crisis in the short, medium and long runs, work out solutions to meet the world population's needs for food and traditional and clean energy supplies; solutions, on which we all agree, and to which we all adhere; a dialogue that is based on common interests and mutual reliance, warns against the risks of speculation in the prices of agricultural commodities, enhances the agricultural development efforts in the fields of land reclamation, raising productivity and the structure necessary for transporting and stocking crops; a dialogue that supports scientific research on fertilizers and new species of seeds and scrutinizes the impacts of genetically modified seeds on plant, animal and human health; a dialogue that confronts the challenges of climate change seriously and effectively in its relation with the predominant types of consumption and production and its grave consequences on the phenomena of draught and desertification in addition to its direct effects on the food security of the world population.

A dialogue that comes up with an international framework of behaviour that reviews the current expansion in bio-fuel production as an alternative source of traditional energy, lays down the criteria for responsible usage of agricultural crops as food for human beings rather than fuel for engines, and re-estimates the real cost of bio-fuel with its social and environmental aspects. The production of bio-fuel should be confined to agricultural waste and agricultural crops allotted for this such as jatropha, rather than human beings' food; an urgent and serious dialogue that reviews the current aid to ethanol and biodiesel producers. This aid should be subjected to the world trade rules on the ground that it is one of the dangerous deformations of the current international system of trade in agricultural commodities.

Ladies and gentlemen, Egypt is facing the repercussions of the current crisis with an economy that has been strengthened by steps of reform and a wide-base network of social solidarity. As I present before you the dimensions of this crisis, call for this dialogue and this international contribution to contain and weather that crisis, I am not driven by motives that reflect our suffering from the current situation, as we all are partners, one way or another, in this suffering. I am rather driven by conviction that we are all in the same boat facing the same challenges and aspire after a better future for our countries and peoples and for a better world that brings good for everyone.

Thank you and peace be upon you.

Source: Channel 1 TV, Cairo, in Arabic 0905 gmt 3 Jun 08

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