Critics say U.N. food summit was wasteful

ROME – Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, blamed for plunging his people into starvation, used his platform as Tuesday’s opening speaker at the U.N. anti-hunger summit to decry what he called his neocolonialist foes.

The image bolstered criticism that the summit called by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization is long on rhetoric and extravagance and short on solutions for the world’s 1 billion hungry.

The meeting was branded a failure within a couple of hours of its start 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.