http://en.afrik.com/article14668.html
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By Patience Rusere
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A spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program said Friday that although the agency must raise $140 million to ensure sufficient food aid flows into Zimbabwe through early 2009, the WFP "pipeline" into the country can serve designated target groups through December.
The WFP issued an appeal for the additional donor funds this week, following a warning late last month from the Famine Early Warning Networks System or FEWSNET that Zimbabwe "could run out of cereals" by early November if the pace of imports into the country by commercial and humanitarian players did not increase threefold.
WFP Southern African spokesman Richard Lee acknowledged the agency faces a challenge as food supplies tighten and the number of people requiring assistance surges.
But he told reporter Patience Rusere of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe that the agency will be able to serve the groups it is targeting through the end of this year.
"What the problem is at the moment is that we do not have any stock for January or February, which is when we really hit the peak of the crisis in Zimbabwe." He said the WFP aims to reach 2.5 million people in October, rising to 4 million in January-February.
"The real concern is when we hit the peak of the crisis in the first three months of 2009. At the moment we do not have sufficient (financial) resources for those three key months," he said. "That's why we really do need donors to come forward.
Many inside the country see a disaster in the making, particularly as the unity government that was supposed to be established following the Sept. 15 signature of an agreement for power-sharing by President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change founded by Morgan Tsvangirai has yet to take shape so it can take action.
Policy Coordinator Eddie Cross of the Tsvangirai MDC formation circulated comments late this week under the heading, "Sliding into the Abyss." He stated that even if donors respond to the WFP appeal, "this still leaves a shortfall in overall cereal and oilseed supplies of 800,000 tonnes for the next six months," while with planting time here and the rainy season weeks away, "there is very little land preparation, virtually no seed and fertilizer."
Elsewhere, the National Association of Non-Governmental Organizations said on Friday that a national disaster should declared.
More reports from VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe...
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By Joe Bavier
KINSHASA (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila named Budget Minister Adolphe Muzito as prime minister on Friday, according to a presidential decree read out on state television.
Muzito, 51, replaces his Unified Lumumbist Party (PALU) leader Antoine Gizenga, who retired last month ahead of his 83rd birthday on October 5.
Muzito has earned praise from diplomats and donors for his fiscal discipline in pushing through austere budgets for Congo following years of political turmoil and a devastating 1998-2003 war that left much of the country's infrastructure in ruins.
"We are very happy. He is a man who is up to the job. Democratic Republic of Congo has found a good prime minister," Mines Minister Martin Kabwelulu, a PALU ally, told Reuters.
Muzito's appointment ends speculation Kabila would end PALU's government leadership by appointing someone from his own People's Party for Reconstruction and Development (PPRD).
Gizenga was appointed prime minister in late 2006 under a deal in which PALU backed Kabila in a presidential run-off vote against former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba. Gizenga had won 13 percent of votes in the first round, behind Kabila and Bemba.
Gizenga's appointment was seen at the time as a marriage of convenience aimed at boosting support for the Swahili-speaking Kabila in the country's Lingala-speaking west, where PALU is popular but where the president enjoys little support.
TOUGH JOB
Muzito faces a difficult task. During nearly two years in office, Gizenga and his administration came under increasing criticism for not doing enough to revive Congo's war-shattered economy and end continuing conflict in its eastern borderlands.
Economic revival depends largely on foreign investments in the vast former Belgian colony's potentially lucrative mining sector, a treasure trove of largely unexploited concessions.
Next week the government is due to announce the results of contract renegotiations undertaken as part of a review of mining deals, most of which were agreed during the war years and a subsequent corruption-plagued three-year transition government.
The process has been repeatedly delayed, and may be again.
Muzito's appointment also coincides with an escalation of tension with eastern neighbor Rwanda this week.
Kabila's administration accuses Rwanda of sending troops to help rebel Congolese Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda capture an eastern army base at Rumangabo and threaten Goma, the capital of North Kivu province. Rwanda denies the accusations.
Kabila -- catapulted to power by the January 2001 assassination of his father Laurent Kabila, himself a former eastern rebel leader -- has failed to end protracted conflicts in the east of the country.
But hundreds of miles (km) away in the western capital Kinshasa, he has progressively tightened control over Congo's administration since winning the 2006 presidential run-off vote.
Pro-Kabila parties already dominate both houses of parliament and most provincial assemblies.
Jean-Pierre Bemba, initially opposition chief in the Senate, is now behind bars in The Hague charged with leading a campaign of rape and torture in Central African Republic in 2002-2003.
(Reporting by Joe Bavier; Editing by Alistair Thomson and Charles Dick)
Copyright © 2008 Reuters, All Rights Reserved.
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