"There is still an opportunity to avert famine and to save lives, but this window is closing rapidly," U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Kenzo Oshima told a meeting called to launch the emergency fundraising appeal.

U.N. officials blame the crisis, the region's worst since a deadly 1992 drought, on a combination of severe drought, floods, economic decline and government mismanagement.

The famine has been aggravated by the residual debilitating effects of past conflicts and the region's extremely high AIDS infection rate, which has killed many farmers and left millions of orphans, the officials say.

The 12.8 million people threatened with starvation live in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe, and about half of them are children, the officials said. Other countries in the region are also threatened although to a lesser extent.

The $611 million in emergency aid would be devoted primarily to immediate food shipments, but the funds would also help prop up agriculture, health, nutrition, water and sanitation, education and child protection services, a U.N. statement said.

The biggest share of the money -- $285 million -- would go to Zimbabwe, where severe food shortages caused by drought and government land seizures threaten more than 6 million of the country's nearly 14 million people.

Zimbabwe is also severely plagued by AIDS, which has orphaned some 600,000 of its children and infected more than 2.2 million of its current residents, according to U.N. figures.

'FAILED AND MALICIOUS POLICIES'

U.S. envoy Sichan Siv told the meeting Washington had already begun shipping food aid to the region and would send more but said the "failed and malicious policies" of President Robert Mugabe had exacerbated Zimbabwe's problems.

"The government has seized productive farmland and interfered with commercial farmers working their fields," Siv said. "Price controls and government monopolies in Zimbabwe, particularly import restrictions on the commercial sector, are leaving millions of Zimbabweans to face starvation."

"A democratic government places the welfare of its people first and takes necessary actions to counter threats such as famine. In every respect, the Mugabe regime has failed in this," Siv said.

The United Nations said that, of the remaining money, $144 million would be earmarked for Malawi, where more than 3 million people will require food aid by the end of the year.

Zambia, where some 2.3 million people need emergency food aid and water due to a prolonged drought, would be allotted $71 million.

Mozambique, where some 70 percent of the population is living below the poverty line, would get $44 million in aid after floods and other natural disasters destroyed three or four consecutive years of crops in many areas, the United Nations said.

In Lesotho, earmarked for $41 million in emergency aid, about a fifth of the country's 2.2 million people require food aid. About $19 million would go to Swaziland, where 21 percent of the population of 1 million need food assistance after two consecutive disastrous farming seasons, the world body said.

The remaining funds would be used to address the crisis at the regional level, it said.

In addition to the United States, Oshima said Britain, Sweden, Canada, Germany and the European Union were among those expressing strong early support for the U.N. aid campaign.

To help the region better provide for itself over the long term, Annan was naming James Morris, executive director of the Rome-based World Food Program, as his special envoy on the humanitarian crisis in southern Africa, Oshima said.

Morris' task would be to travel to the region and work with governments to ensure a "coherent and complete response to the crisis," Oshima said. He would also work with international donors to ensure aid was used efficiently and went to those most in need.

(China Daily July 19, 2002)