FAMINE AID TO ETHIOPIA

That this House notes the report by Martin Plant, Africa Editor for the BBC World Service, that aid money including that raised from the Live Aid concerts, to combat widespread famine in Ethiopia in 1984-85 was siphoned off by rebels to buy weapons; that, because the then Soviet Union supported the Ethiopian government, the United States under President Reagan issued its National Security Directive 75 which declared that `US policy will seek to limit and destabilise activities of Soviet Third World allies and clients', and that from this the BBC report concludes that `the suggestion cannot be ruled out that the CIA not only knew about, but supported, the diversion of aid fund'; and considers that, if this were the case, it was a monstrous act by the then US authorities, betraying the trust and generosity of the millions of people who supported the aid effort, and resulting in the deaths of Ethiopian famine victims who could, with the proper application of those funds, have been saved.