DAKAR, May 5: Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade has called for the main UN food agency to be scrapped, saying it is a “waste of money” and “largely to blame” for the global food price rise crisis.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation declined to comment on Monday on the remarks by the outspoken Senegalese leader.

While praising the “qualities” of FAO chief Jacques Diouf — Wade’s compatriot — the Senegalese president said on Sunday that the UN food agency was a “waste of money largely spent on doing very little for effective operations on the ground.” Speaking of food price rises which have sparked unrest in several countries, Wade said: “The current situation is largely its (the FAO’s) failure and the cries of alarm will not help at all.” Nick Parsons, communications director for the Rome-based agency, said on Monday: “As an organisation we have no comment at all.” Parsons was unable to say whether the FAO director general would comment later.

But an expert at the UN agency who requested anonymity said: “At a time of troubles in several countries because of the food crisis, it is easy for governments to scapegoat the FAO.” The organisation is “far from perfect, but as the report on governance said, it is indispensable, and if it didn’t exist it would have to be invented,” he said, referring to a damning report last year by an independent panel.

The report, commissioned by the UN agency, said: “FAO is today on the brink. If the current muddle-through strategy... is continued, the result will be increasingly rapid decline.” The FAO expert said: “The agricultural sector has been abandoned these past 15 years. Only the FAO said it was important, but it did not make itself heard.

It was only in late 2007 that the World Bank recognised that it was a mistake to neglect agriculture.” On Sunday, Wade recalled that he had long campaigned for the FAO to be relocated to Africa, the world’s poorest continent, wracked by food shortages and hunger.

“This time, I’m going further, we must scrap it,” he said, saying the agency’s work was being “duplicated by others, apparently more efficiently.”

The Senegalese leader said several initiatives had been launched after the world suddenly woke up to the food crisis but even these showed the “progressive marginalisation” of the FAO.

He said the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which combats rural hunger and poverty in developing countries through low-interest loans and direct assistance, “could become the new world agricultural assistance fund with its headquarters in Africa.” FAO chief Diouf had recently called for a revamp of the UN system and bemoaned the conflicting policies of different international organisations.

In November, the agency’s 189 member states approved a 13 per cent budget increase which Diouf said would help the organisation carry out “urgent” reforms.

The FAO has an annual budget of $433 million and employs more than 3,000 people.—AFP