The United Nations' World Food Programme is preparing for a major conference. 'The World Food Conference' will be held in Rome next November.

At the United Nations' building in New York on Thursday (7 February) the Preparatory Committee of the conference held its first meeting to discuss and plan the Rome meeting.

Sayed Ahmed Marei, the Conference's Secretary General, spoke to newsmen on the same day. He had been appointed to his post by U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim on 1 February. The 61-year-old diplomat is a Special Assistant to President Anwar Sadat of Egypt.

Mr. Marei told newsmen that world food-supply problems are urgent. But, he said, the world has never been able to organise itself to ease "the unbearable condition of hunger and malnutrition that is a constant threat or reality to so many human beings".

He went on to add that the world is heading for the most serious food crisis that it has ever known. He called for "decisive action", concluding that if this did not come out of the conference it would "prove a mockery....of the whole idea of genuine co-operation among nations".

At the Committee meeting itself member nations were asked to contribute a minimum total of 440 million U.S. dollars (about 20 million pounds sterling) in food and finance for the years 1975 and 1976. This is a one-hundred-million dollar (about 45-million-pounds sterling) increase for the current two years.