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Delicacies On Hunger Panel's Menu

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The Associated Press

Published: June 4, 2008

ROME - For presidents and premiers at summits, delicacies washed down by fine wines are part of the agenda.

But the puff pastries with corn and mozzarella, pasta with pumpkin and shrimp, and rolls of thinly sliced veal served Tuesday at a U.N. conference on fighting hunger were a contrast to bleak accounts of starving people around the world.

The repast served in a dining room at the headquarters of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization was accompanied by a chilled white wine from Orvieto in the hills of Umbria north of Rome.

"It's pretty standard stuff," said agency spokesman Nick Parsons.

For decades, the agency has striven for a sober culinary touch since an embarrassing moment during a similar summit called in 1974 amid a food crisis and oil shock.

The foreign minister of Bangladesh, which had suffered a severe famine, addressed a nearly deserted conference hall as most of the delegates nibbled on canapes at a nearby cocktail party.

Commentators howled hypocrisy.

But in Rome, one of Europe's premier gastronomic capitals, it's hard to deliver a spare meal.

The top delegates - heads of state and government - were invited to the luncheon in a special dining room. Everyone else ate in the cafeteria.

"Leaders can eat what they want as long as they take decisive action to deliver the policies and the aid in agriculture that is needed to ensure that poor people who are suffering from high food prices are helped," said Alexander Woollcombe, a spokesman for the British aid group Oxfam.

The agency luncheon was not the only food game in town for delegates.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi was co-hosting a state dinner Tuesday evening with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at Villa Madama, a Renaissance villa.

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