18457: (Chamberlain) UN fears food crisis as Haiti violence blocks aid (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Irwin Arieff

    UNITED NATIONS, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of Haitians
could go hungry if violence and unrest keep raging in the poverty-stricken
Caribbean nation, U.N. officials said on Wednesday.
     Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest country where chronic
malnutrition rates range as high as 33 percent, has been torn in recent
days by an armed rebellion and government counter-revolt that have killed
more than 35 people.
     A U.N. assessment team is in the country of 8 million people to
prepare a contingency plan in the event conditions deteriorate further, and
is expected to report shortly to Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief
coordinator, the officials said.
     The rebellion began last Thursday in the city of Gonaives, the
country's fourth-largest city and the birthplace of its independence from
France 200 years ago, when a gang that once supported President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide seized control.
     The revolt spread to several other cities and towns and threatened the
rule of Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest once hailed as a champion
of Haiti's fledgling democracy but now criticized by opponents for abuse of
civil rights and political thuggery.
     The Rome-based World Food Program, the United Nations' food arm, said
the violence last week blocked a key road used to deliver food supplies to
the needy in northern Haiti.
     If deliveries do not resume within a week, as many as 268,000 people
could be left hungry, including 90,000 schoolchildren, program officials
said.
     "The insecurity and violence make us fear a major humanitarian
crisis," Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said in Geneva on Tuesday.
     Deliveries elsewhere in the country have also become a growing concern
due to eight attacks on World Food Program truck convoys since last
November, resulting in the loss of 61 tonnes of food, the World Food
Program said.