Countries refuse to back UN food fund

POPE Benedict XVI decried the worsening plight of the world’s one billion hungry yesterday as a United Nations food summit rallied around a strategy of more help to farmers in poor nations but rebuffed a UN appeal to commit billions to the plan.

In a show of broad consensus, some 60 heads of state and dozens of ministers from other nations pledged to substantially increase aid to agriculture in developing nations to help them become more self-sufficient in food production.

The world’s wealthiest nations put forward the strategy at the Group of Eight summit this summer in L’Aquila, Italy.