U.N.: 'zero dollars and zero cents' for Colombian aid program

CNN
Febraury 1, 2000

U.N.: 'zero dollars and zero cents' for Colombian aid program

                  UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -- The U.N. World Food program Tuesday
                  called off its February launch of food and work programs for tens of
                  thousands of uprooted Colombians because donors gave no money for the
                  project.

"The amount is zero dollars and zero cents," U.N. spokesman John Mills
said.

                  WFP in November 1999 appealed to governments for $9 million for a
                  two-year food project, including a food-for-work program, in an effort to
                  stop villagers drifting into city slums to escape fighting among insurgency
                  groups and the army.

But Mills said the Rome-based agency would have to postpone the program
and renew its appeal.

                  Colombia has more homeless people than any other country in the Western
                  hemisphere, with about 180,000 people now uprooted each year, WFP
                  said. In the past 15 years more than 1.5 million people have been made
                  homeless with no end in sight.

                  The WFP program was aimed at 200,000 people, many of whom still live
                  close to their original homes, and included job training in exchange for food
                  and some food production projects.

                  Successive Colombian governments for more than three decades have been
                  battling two leftist guerrilla armies and a right-wing paramilitary force, all of
                  which derive income from taxing the drug trade.