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To: Bobby Yellin who wrote (42)	11/25/1998 7:49:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 178

Full story Does Russia really need food aid? Even donors ask 10:26 a.m. Nov 25, 1998 Eastern By Sebastian Alison MOSCOW, Nov 25 (Reuters) - As even some food aid donor countries begin to question whether Russia really needs aid this winter, a Russian agricultural specialist said there were some areas of specific need but warned Russian firms could suffer. ''Today there is a fairly urgent need for food aid,'' Andrei Sizov of Russian agricultural consultancy SovEcon told Reuters. ''Otherwise there's a real threat that Russia will be left with an underfed army and unfed prisons.'' He said a poor grain harvest, the lowest in over 40 years, and the fact both the government and grain trading companies had no money to buy grain meant aid requests were now unavoidable. ''The state has certain responsibilities,'' he said. ''It must supply the army, prisons, hospitals. The state has to guarantee them grain, but cannot buy it on the internal market.'' On Tuesday U.S. Senate Agricultural Committee chairman Richard Lugar, returning from a nine-day trip to Russia, said many Russians had derided a U.S. aid package as an attempt to offload surpluses and said many did not expect to need aid. ''This is not a country where a lot of people are going to starve this winter,'' he said. Russia's total grain harvest this year is expected to be 43 to 45 million tonnes, Deputy Prime Minister Gennady Kulik said earlier this month. This is a massive fall from last year's 88.5 million tonnes. But a more serious problem is that following a currency devaluation on August 17, Russia's ability to pay for imports has been drastically reduced. It imported $13 billion worth of food last year, a third of all food consumed. Following the devaluation, the U.S. lost little time in offering food aid. The Department of Agriculture is now working on final details of an aid package valued at $885 million by USDA general sales manager Chris Goldthwait. The European Union was quick to follow. After a meeting of farm ministers ended in Brussels on Tuesday, EU farm chief Franz Fischler said a proposal on a package including wheat, rye, beef, pork, rice and milk powder would be issued within two weeks. But when Russia decided to accept food as payment from Ukraine and Belarus for debts for natural gas, questions arose whether Russia needed aid at all, especially as Russian wheat exports, included in all aid offers, were extremely high. Sizov said this was inevitable as, although there was clear demand for wheat on the home market, the fact that there was no money to pay for it meant producers had no option but to export. This also meant producers would not have their markets cut from under them by aid deliveries, as they were not being paid in any case. But he said grain traders would certainly suffer as free food arrived. ''From the point of view of traders, it deprives them of a market. These volumes, 500,000 tonnes of corn and 250,000 tonnes of soya beans, are enormous, they're twice Russia's annual imports,'' he said. ''If a Russian grain trading company had previously been importing this, then their market has contracted because of these deliveries. They will be left without work,'' he said. Traders also stood to suffer if Russia introduced measures to limit exports, as donors have insisted they do. Sizov added that deliveries of corn, soya beans and soya bean meal were particularly important for Russia as they would help continue the recent positive trend seen in the poultry sector, which Russia has said it will target for support. This is unlikely to be welcomed by U.S. poultry farmers, who have seen their largest single market all but disappear since the financial crisis started. ((Moscow Newsroom, +7095 941-8520 moscow.newsroom+reuters.com)) REUTERS SA PL Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.

To: Bobby Yellin who wrote (42)	11/28/1998 5:25:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 178

It is food "stupid".. Ruling Party Defeated in India Vote Saturday, 28 November 1998 N E W D E L H I , I N D I A (AP) VOTERS HAVE rejected India's ruling party in three crucial state elections, a rout that could destabilize the federal government. After results were tallied Saturday, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said voters who cast their ballots Wednesday appeared to want a change, and admitted defeat for his his Bharatiya Janata Party in three of four states to the opposition Congress party. A regional party was leading in a fourth state, where the BJP did not contest elections. Vajpayee insisted the results would have no bearing on the stability of his 8-month-old federal government - but others saw the BJP's rout as a referendum on its rule and said defeat could lead to infighting with its 18 coalition partners. "It's clearly a vote against the BJP's policies, the poor performance of the government," said Mamta Banerjee, a leader of the BJP-allied Trinamul Congress, who said her party would stick with the BJP - for now. There were even those in the BJP who hinted that the federal government's performance was to blame. "The voters did not defeat us; the BJP worked for its own defeat," said Delhi's outgoing BJP chief minister, Sushma Swaraj. It also was a key test for Congress' new leader, Sonia Gandhi, widow of slain former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and torchbearer of the dynasty that has ruled India for most of its 51 years of independence. Gandhi has focused on rebuilding the Congress Party since she emerged from seclusion early this year to campaign in national elections. She was later named president of the party that was once led by her husband, his mother Indira Gandhi, and Indira's father Jawaharlal Nehru. Congress could win two-thirds of the seats in the states of Rajasthan and New Delhi, hitherto considered the BJP strongholds. Bucking opinion polls, the Congress also managed to retain power in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. A regional party was likely to form a government in Mizoram. "The BJP has lost the goodwill of the people. Its eight-month-rule has been marked by sheer incompetence, bickering and inability to govern," said Natwar Singh, a Congress leader. For now, Congress said it had no immediate plans to unseat the federal government, although the victories might eventually prompt the party to woo enough lawmakers in federal Parliament to unseat Vajpayee. "This can't be put aside as a local issue," said Salman Khursheed, another Congress leader. "This is an approval signal from the people." More than 600 seats were contested in the voting for about 5,000 candidates from dozens of political parties. Final results were expected early Sunday. Skyrocketing prices for vegetables and foodgrain were the main issue, wiping out any credit the BJP may have earned for the highly popular nuclear tests it conducted in May. The election was the first political test for the BJP since it took office eight months ago.