Mutharika u-turn from Rome, returns home

President Dr Bingu wa Mutharika returns to Malawi Wednesday from Rome, Italy where he had gone to attend World Food summit cutting his trip to the Islands of Trinidad and Tobago for this year’s Commonwealth Summit.

Mutharika’s return is a surprise after he announced on departure that he will proceed to Trinidad and Tobago.

“So if I delay coming back home, don’t say I have run away, from Rome I will be going to this Commonwealth Summit,” Mutharika said when he left the country.

But on Wednesday it was reported that the President has suddenly changed his itinerary and would return home.

Malawi facing the worst forex shortage has for the past four weeks gone with empty tanks at fuel service centres. Motorists are continuing to abandon their cars at filling stations in hopes that they would be served once fuel supplies arrive at the stations.

However, the food security summit in Rome was branded a failure after the 192 participating countries unanimously rebuffed the United Nations’ appeal for commitments of billions of dollars in yearly aid to develop agriculture in poor nations.

None of the leaders of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations attended except for Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi.

FAO director-general Jacques Diouf expressed “regret” and frustration that the summit rejected his call to members to fund the new shift in agricultural development policy.

About an hour after the decision, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a speech to the summit condemning opulence and waste in a world where the numbers of hungry have multiplied despite international efforts to combat chronic hunger. (Additional reporting AFP)

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