America, EU and food aid to Africa: The Americans want Zambia sanctioned for rejecting US-supplied GM food aid. But the EU is not too interested. (Around Africa: Zambia).

Tony Hall, the US ambassador to the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), takes no prisoners, judging by his recent furious attack in Brussels on the Zambian president, Levy Mwanawasa. Addressing a press conference in the Belgian capital on Zambia's rejection of American-supplied Genetically Modified (GM) food aid, an indignant Hall intoned: "The world needs to put pressure on the leaders in the region that are turning this food down saying that it is poison.

"We even had some food inside Zambia that had to go out, perfectly good food, food that is eaten by Americans every day, and even by South Africans. Leaders who deny food to their people, whom they in fact starve to death, should be held responsible for the highest crimes against humanity, in the highest courts of the world."

Hall cannot countenance the Zambian government's decision last November to turn down 15,000 tons of US-supplied GM maize, which President Mwanawasa controversially described as "poison". The decision was made on the basis of studies done by (according to the Zambians), Dr Marc Lappe, a world renowned scientist, who concluded that concentrations of compounds that protect against heart disease and cancer were lower in GM soyabeans than in traditional strains.

Other studies, according to the Zambians, had also indicated that GM foods had lower nutritional quality and also represented a danger in terms of antibiotic resistance in animals and human beings.

But Hall was adamant that the EU should send "very clear signals" that American GM maize was not only good but also very safe. "This is a disaster in its making. There is food in the area [Zambia] that needs to be eaten, and should be allowed to be eaten," said Hall.

Whether they like it or not, according to Hall, Zambians will have to take the American GM maize if they want to escape famine, adding that "it was almost impossible to get other food in time over there." He then complained that the Europeans were not too enthusiastic about the American view on GM food. In December, the American newspaper, Minneapolis Star Tribune, had quoted a representative of the US Mission to the EU as saying that the Europeans were partly blameable for Zambia's rejection of America's GM maize".

But the EU commissioner for co-operation, development and humanitarian assistance, Paul Nielsen, accepts no such blame. "We are approaching a point where I would propose a deal to the Americans," Nielsen said at a press conference on 20 January.

"It would be: 'if the Americans stop lying about us, we would stop telling the truth about them'." Emptying his chest further, Nielsen said: "From the start, we have consistently stuck to our advice that we do not see a problem for the consumption of that maize. At the same time, we deny US allegations that European countries have threatened Southern African countries [that we would] reduce their economic support and their access to the EU market if they accepted GM maize.

"We also made it clear that it was not up to us or to any other outside partner to dictate the policy of any other country. We find it very strange that the Americans are not willing to pay for the milling of their maize to eliminate any risk of being used as seed in Zambia [or elsewhere]."

According to Nielsen, the EU had also "expressed the view that as a matter of principle, we find it better to buy food in the [famine-hit Southern African] region and distribute it instead of using the food crisis in the world as a more or less opportunistic background for getting rid of surplus production, even based on subsidised agricultural production. And we have so far managed to cover our substantial contribution of food to the region, which is at least 90% bought in the region." EU officials find Hall's threat to bring Mwanawasa to an international court very strange, especially when America itself does not recognise the International Criminal Court.

Harsher criticisms against the American stand on GM food have come from the environmental group, Greenpeace, which has branded the US government, USAID and the American GM industry as "cynical manipulators of the famine in Africa."

Greenpeace particularly singled out USAID as "a vehicle for the American GM industry". It said USAID had pushed African states to pass intellectual property legislation, clearing the way for American GM corporations to develop markets on the continent. From the industry's point of view, therefore, Zambia's attitude to GM food is a dangerous one that threatens to jeopardise GM expansion in other developing countries.