Ethiopia is facing a famine dwarfing the disaster that hit the country in the 1980s, its prime minister has warned.
Mr Meles Zenawi has called for urgent international action to avoid a major human catastrophe.
He told reporters: "The facts speak for themselves. The disaster we had in 84-85 . . . the number involved was roughly a third to one half of the number of people involved now.
"So if that was a nightmare, this will be too ghastly to contemplate".
Christian Aid spokesman Mr Andrew Pendleton said: "10 per cent plus of the Ethiopian government's revenues are spent on repaying international debts.
"That is an enormous amount of money to take away from a country that is critically poor," he said.
"Certainly now we have to respond to the immediate problem. But in the long term we have to take a look at why this keeps happening again and again."
PA