Relief agency says Iraqis will be starving within a month

The World Food Programme believes that the poorest Iraqis will begin to run out of food by the end of the month, the agency said yesterday.

The WFP, the world's largest humanitarian agency, announced that five days after launching its emergency food aid appeal for Iraq, it had received pledges of more than $270m (£170m).

Describing the response as "the best possible start", the executive director of the programme, James T Morris, revealed America had committed "a mammoth" $260m, Germany $6.46m and Canada $4.2m. Spain will contribute $1.6m and New Zealand $565,000 to the logistics operations described in the appeal. Australia has promised 100,000 tonnes of wheat.

The WFP, working overtime to put in place the food and delivery machinery to cope with a feared humanitarian catastrophe, had appealed for humanitarian assistance of $2.2bn, of which $1.3bn is for food aid. "This is the best possible start to the biggest single appeal in WFP's 40-year history," said Mr Morris. "We are extremely grateful for these nations' generosity." The agency is about $1bn shy of its goal.

The WFP is also racing to review contracts under the revived oil-for-food programme, to see how much food can be delivered to Iraq by 12 May, the goal set by a UN Security Council last week. The programme has enabled Iraq to buy food and other humanitarian supplies from the proceeds of its oil exports during the past seven years. The initial estimate of the value of these revived contracts was said to be $270m. But it is unclear how much of this will be readily available, and it will in any case cover only part of the requirement. "The onus will remain on individual donors to help fund an operation which could evolve into the largest in the history of humanitarian aid," said Mr Morris.

Bracing for the possible exodus of 2.1 million Iraqis, the agency has stored some 30,000 tons of food in neighbouring countries, and expects to put its staff back into Iraq within a month to get the public distribution system set up under the oil-for-food programme running again. That may be required to distribute food to Iraq's entire population of 27.1 million.

The third phase of the planned six-month operation is expected to see the WFP set up its food pipeline, equipped to funnel food supplies to the most vulnerable groups within the Iraqi population whom the revived public distribution system may miss, including refugees, internally displaced people and others.

The agency has laid down the infrastructure to deliver 40,000 tons of food aid per month to Iraq. It has deployed 168 staff across the region, and made deals with shipping and haulage companies, mapping the corridors across Jordan, Kuwait, Syria and Turkey through which humanitarian aid will be delivered to the population.

"We still have a long way to go and we cannot afford to lose time," said Mr Morris. "We believe the poorest Iraqis will run out of food by the end of April."