Conference on Horn’s drought - The African Union has postponed a summit to discuss the drought in the Horn of Africa indefinitely, a communication officer of the continental body said on Wednesday.

The conference was originally planned to take place on 9 August in Addis Ababa, the seat of AU Headquarters.

“The conference would no longer take place on 9 August. The new date would be announced soon once the organisers have finalised every preparation and received confirmation from our seniors,” the communication officer said.

Other AU sources said that the original schedule was not done with enough notice to heads of state, so the postponement was meant to give them time to make it to the summit conference.

The Horn of Africa is suffering a devastating drought that has been compounded by conflict in Somalia, bad governance and spiralling food prices, poor rains and climate change effects.

Tens of thousands of people have already died and tens of thousands more have fled Somalia in the hope of finding food aid at refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia.

Also on Wednesday the UN raised the number of famine zones in Somalia from two to five including refugee camps in Mogadishu.

Pana 04/08/2011