Since Ethiopia recovered the captured town of Badame in February last year and Eritrea's unsuccessful effort to win it back nine months ago, there has been little actual fighting.

But both sides still hold areas of the other's territory; half a million soldiers remain in trenches along the disputed borders, and both countries continue to spend millions of dollars they can ill afford on tanks, planes and other high-tech weaponry.

Mediation has made little progress. Originally, Eritrea baulked at the framework peace deal from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) which Ethiopia accepted in November 1998, and agreed only after its loss of Badame. Last July, both sides endorsed the second stage of the peace plan, but talks have subsequently broken down.

Last month, it seemed that the Algerian and United States mediators had accepted Ethiopia's arguments, and Addis Ababa said it finally found the technical arrangements satisfactory. Eritrea promptly objected, claiming the changes favoured Ethiopia; President Issayas of Eritrea, presently in Washington, insists that Eritrea should now be allowed to make its changes to the arrangements. Proximity talks, due in Algiers in March, were postponed until 20 April, and US negotiators suspect there will be further delays.

As the wrangling continues, drought and famine deepen in both countries. Eritrea has about one million people at risk, almost a third of its population; Ethiopia is currently appealing for food aid for nearly eight million people. If the short rains are insufficient as seems likely, two million more will need help, pushing the estimated food aid requirement up from 800,000 tons to over a million tons.

By 1999, Ethiopia had already suffered two years of drought and joined international aid agencies in sounding the alarm.

A major appeal was launched in January this year, but the response has been slow. Little more than 50 per cent of the food needed has been pledged, and as of 1 April, virtually nothing had actually arrived -- leading Ethiopia's Foreign Minister, Seyoum Mesfin, to claim that it was only when people started to see "skeletons on screens" that the international community reacted.

One effect is that food stocks will not be in place on the ground before the start of the main rains in June, making transportation far harder.

The EU now says it is preparing to send 800,000 tons of food. But this raises concerns over the long term ability of the port of Djibouti, Ethiopia's main access to the sea, to cope. Though it is linked to Addis Ababa by two roads and a railway, all three desperately need modernising.

Ethiopia lost the use of the Eritrean ports of Massawa and Assab when war broke out in May 1998, meaning that almost all of its imports, including military and food aid, and exports, pass through Djibouti -- though some relief for the worst hit south-east is entering through the Somali port of Berbera. Thus far, Djibouti has managed, but an extra 120,000 to 150,000 tons of food aid month, will stretch it to the limit.

The river also provides the generating power for the town of Gode, 500 kilometers (300 miles) southeast of the capital Addis Ababa.

Its level is low now, so electricity is on for just six hours every day.

Mohamed Abdi comes to the river every day with his donkey to fill his jerry cans. It is a return trip of some 14 kilometers (eight miles) between the Shabelle and his makeshift hut on the outskirts of Gode. Gode is the largest town among seven districts affected by the drought in Ethiopia, one of the world's poorest countries.

More than 400 people, mostly children, died of starvation last month in the Gode area. Last week the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), said almost a million tonnes of food aid was needed in Ethiopia, where it said eight million people were in need.

Distribution of international food aid in the region is hampered by the bad state of roads and ports. Next to established wattle dwellings in Gode, many huts for the newly displaced have sprung up. For them, the Shabelle is the only source of water.

Abdi, who is married with five children, cannot feed his family because he has lost his livestock. "My 40 cattle died because of the drought. Now I search for wood and sell it but I can only make five birrs (less than a dollar) a day," he said.

His wife Choukria, his three daughters and two-month old boy, all weakened, eat in one of the two nutritional centres set up in the town with the help of aid agencies.

His eldest son, who is in better health, lends his father a hand.

A nine-year-old boy methodically fills a large jerry-can on the back of a donkey. They have to negotiate their way between naked boys playing in the river.

The laughter and cries prompt women washing nearby to scold them.

Adults take care to slap the water noisily from time to time to scare away crocodiles. There have been many fatal attacks, according to witnesses.

In the town of Kelafo, 100 kilometers (60 miles) away, some 47 lives have been lost to the beasts, according to an aid worker who visited there in February.

A column of emaciated cattle turn up. They can hardly make it to the water's edge. They stay for 20 minutes or so, without bothering the playing children.

Mohamed moves away a little, to give him room to fill his containers.

The same scene is repeated all along the river, up to the border with Somalia at the extreme east of Ethiopia.

Men and children share the water with thirsty cattle that have walked across arid land for days. They left behind hundreds of carcasses, including those of camels, who are known for their ability to survive dry climates.

Adan spent 10 days walking 60 miles with her three children to a feeding center in Gode, 360 miles southeast of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. The trek proved too much for her 4-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son. Both died along the way.

Faday walked to Baidoa in neighboring Somalia in search of help after drought ended her farm work. Faday's husband died a year ago; the twin to the tiny, malnourished baby wrapped in her arms died at birth. Now, she says, she has nothing.

These women's odysseys took place in February and March, as severe food shortages brought on by drought began to threaten millions of lives. Similar tales have been told over and over again in Ethiopia and Somalia.

"I have not seen rain for 18 months,'' said Adan, whose family's herd of 200 cattle and sheep died months ago. "I just have to wait for something from God.''

The 33-year-old Adan, looking sad yet dignified in her dusty traditional veils, her remaining child tucked under her arm, now lives in a tiny hut of dried grass and bits of cloth. Faday has no place of her own and is forced to rely on charity.

But nature is not solely responsible for the desperate situations of people like Adan and Faday. Politics, war and centuries of nomadic culture all have played roles. The entire region has a history of conflict and perennial food shortages. Of the countries bordering Ethiopia — Kenya, Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia — only Kenya can claim any meaningful stability. In recent years Ethiopia has perhaps suffered the most from drought, worsened by on-and-off warfare since the mid-1970s.

In 1984, televised images of skeletal, starving Ethiopians pulled on the world's conscience, and as many as 1 million died. But famine also came in 1972, 1974 and 1989.

Officials in Gode, which is home to ethnic Somalis and one of the worst-affected areas, say the drought comes in 10-year-cycles.

Now, 11 years after the last severe food shortage, the message is being repeated. This time, aid groups say 7.7 million are at risk.

"These people are really on the edge,'' said Ben Foot, country director for the British branch of the international charity Save the Children.

The situation is exacerbated, local officials say, by the nomadic lifestyle of the people who live in the region. The nomads rely on livestock for food and income. When the rains fail, cattle, goats, camels and sheep die — leaving the people with nothing. They then migrate to feeding centers, stretching local resources and increasing the risk of disease. Some 70 percent of the 3.5 million people in Ethiopia's Somali region, are nomads, government figures say.

Ibrahim Abdi, chairman of the regional emergency task force, said the key is to persuade nomads to settle and diversify into farming.

"The problem is people do not adapt so quickly because agriculture is very laborious work,'' he said. "If they get a harvest for two or three years, they will then go and buy cattle and go back to where they started.''

Teshome Emanek, head of the government's disaster preparedness and prevention committee, said regional authorities in Ethiopia — where regions have some autonomy — lack the means to end the cycle of famine.

In Gode, the Wabe Shebelle River still flows strongly, but it has not been used efficiently for irrigation. "Nothing is being done at this time to bring them (the nomads) off the land,'' Teshome said. He estimates it would take at least 10 years to change local habits.

The Somali people on both sides of the border have been nomads for centuries, and their allegiance is to the land and their clans, not to any state. Most would resist changes.

Aid officials say political attitudes and trade regulations need to change throughout the region so that the nomads can take their herds to the closest market without being blocked by national borders. In the meantime, the government is asking donors for more than 800,000 tons of food to keep famine at bay.

The toll is far higher than any figures relating to the food shortages in the Horn of Africa country and also threatens the most economically productive part of the population. "AIDS is a far greater crisis facing Ethiopia than famine," one health expert told Reuters on Tuesday.

"At risk of sounding cynical, I am amazed at the reaction of the Ethiopian government and the West to the food shortages compared to their reaction to the AIDS crisis." Last week, latest figures on Ethiopia's AIDS crisis showed that nearly 10 percent of the sexually active population -- those aged between 15 and 49 -- were infected with HIV.

Some 27 million of Ethiopia's 61 million people fall in that age group and those infected are projected not only to pass on the virus to tens of thousands of others, but also produce thousands of HIV-positive babies who will become orphans before probably falling to the disease themselves.

These figures are conservative estimates and based on testing at pregnancy clinics in mainly urban areas, experts say. The Ethiopian government has introduced public awareness campaigns, but health experts say privately that these are half-hearted and have had little impact.

Minister Natan Sharansky compared their plight to his own struggle to reach Israel from Soviet Russia, but said in a visit Monday to a dusty transit camp that he would not grant visas to all 26,000 because many were simply wanted a free ticket to the relatively prosperous Jewish state.

Lobbyists for the community, however, accused him of discriminating against the Falash Mura while approving the immigration of hundreds of thousands of non-Jews from the former Soviet Union.

Falash Mura are Ethiopian Jews who converted to Christianity and their descendants. In recent years, 18,000 have left homes in anticipation of moving to Israel and have rented small mud huts near two compounds run by immigration activists in Addis Ababa, the capital, and in the northern city of Gondar.

The pain of their displacement prompted a promise Monday from Sharansky, who spent nine years in Soviet prisons for trying to help Jews emigrate, to end a bureaucratic stalemate and process their applications within months. He said approval would be granted on the basis of a law that grants citizenship to Jews and their children and grandchildren.

Criteria for reunifying families would also be established, Sharansky said.

Members of the compound in Addis Ababa showed Sharansky their commitment to Judaism.

Women baked matzah, unleavened bread used for the Jewish holiday of Passover, over an open fire, while children sang Hebrew songs and knitted ritual prayer fringes.

Sharansky, wearing his trademark khaki cap and sneakers, visited rickety shacks where children sat on wooden benches, studying Hebrew.

``Why did you come here?'' he asked 15-year-old Fakato Tarke.

``To join my father in Israel,'' Tarke replied, telling Sharansky in broken Hebrew that he has been waiting for two years.

Sharansky promised to speed the process by sending officials to Ethiopia to check applications.

``I was in jail in Russia for nine years because I wanted to reach Israel,'' he reminded them.

However, accepting all who wanted to come, he said, would set a precedent that would flood Israel with immigration requests on hardship grounds.

``Suffering doesn't make someone Jewish,'' Sharansky said.

Andy Goldman, one of the compound organizers, said Israel was deliberately stonewalling the Falash Mura because they are ``poor and black.''

Their absorption costs Israel a lot of money in stipends and social services, and many Israelis oppose the immigration of a group they consider to be non-Jewish.

Shlomo Mula, an immigration official responsible for settling Ethiopian Jews in Israel, said that race had nothing to do with it.

``The Falash Mura decided to be Jewish 10 years ago, when they saw Ethiopian Jews coming to Israel,'' said Mula, who made the dangerous trek from Ethiopia to the Sudan 15 years ago to reach Israel.

But expectations of reaching Israel have created irreversible migration.

Yenesewbeza Bitewa left her house and farmland in northern Ethiopia two years ago, at the request of her married daughter, who immigrated to Israel.

An appeal for 5.2 million Swiss francs has been launched to help nearly 80,000 people in Ethiopia's northern highlands where the belg rains, which normally fall from February to April, have failed for the fourth successive year.

The Federation, in conjunction with the Ethiopian Red Cross Society, will initially be focusing on two districts in South Wollo - Ambassel and Kutaber, where a six month supplementary feeding programme was put into operation last year for 40,000 people. The Red Cross is the only international aid organisation to work in these two areas, scene of some of the worst famine in 1974 and 1984.

The Ethiopian Red Cross has been working in Ambassel and Kutaber for more than ten years. Its role and that of the Federation's has been vital in supporting the poorest sections of the community and it will continue to be so during the next year.

The Federation and the Ethiopian Red Cross will also be assessing the possibility of aid interventions in other areas of the country.

In addition, the Federation will be coordinating with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which will be conducting relief operations in various districts in the Somali National Regional State.

"The Red Cross provides an essential and reliable link between those who want to give and those in need. Our presence on the ground ensures that," says Richard May, the Federation's head of delegation in Addis Ababa.

Two million people in South Wollo are dependent on the belg rains for the production of short cycle crops and for planting the high yield, long maturing crops such as corn and sorghum in April.

Successive failures of the rains have left dwindling stocks of food and rising levels of malnutrition among the farmers who've had to sell off livestock and other belongings to buy what food they can.

Many have deserted the land in search of other sources of income and food.

Nearly 140,000 people in Ambassel and Kutaber are now badly affected by the drought. The Red Cross will be helping the most vulnerable amongst them - the farmers. Speed is of the essence if their lives are to be saved.

Funds raised for the appeal will help provide food rations for up to 15,500 farmers for eight months, supplementary feeding for 23,250 at-risk individuals including children under five, pregnant women and mothers with new born babies.

The Red Cross will also initiate an employment generation scheme that will provide work for approximately 12,400 households. The money earned will enable the people to buy food on the open market.

Nigel Roberts, the bank's director in Ethiopia, said that while the need for food assistance has increased significantly this year because of prolonged drought, the problems creating a potential humanitarian disaster will not disappear even if the rains come.

The Ethiopian government has appealed for 922,000 tons of food aid to assist some 7.7 million threatened with starvation.

"(The food shortage) is a symptom of the overall level of poverty in the country,'' Roberts told reporters. "When this emergency is over, the underlying structural problems will remain. ... It will take substantial commitment by the government and the donor community. It's important to understand that Ethiopia has persistent food crises.''

Roberts said it was necessary to transform what is basically an agrarian economy by promoting development in urban areas and increasing the purchasing power of those living in drought-affected areas.

He said the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was more committed to development than previous administrations, but he also said there was a lot more it could do.

He added that Ethiopia's 23-month border war with neighboring Eritrea was having a tremendous impact on government resources.

"Any war of this size consumes a sizable proportion of national resources,'' he told The Associated Press after the conference. "Ethiopia has had very little success sustaining the (development) process for any number of years because of serious shocks to the economy.

"This year, they have had (the impact) of the war, lack of rain and a drastic deterioration in terms of trade because world prices of coffee, its main export have fallen, while the price of oil, its main import, has risen.'' Simon Mechale, commissioner of Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Committee, told reporters the war effort had not hampered the government's attempts to deal with the drought.

"The implication is that the government should give up the war because of drought in the country,'' he said. "I think that's a complete misunderstanding. We did not call for the war, and we did not call for the drought. These are unexpected things we are trying to fight.''

When asked what the government was spending on the war effort and the drought effort, he said it was "irrelevant.''

Simon said Ethiopia's main problem was a lack of relief food.

The U.N.'s special envoy for the Horn of Africa, Catherine Bertini, arrived in Addis Ababa on Tuesday to begin a weeklong tour of the region.

Bertini is also executive director of the U.N.'s World Food Program, which estimates 12.4 million people are at risk in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Kenya and Somalia. Bertini will visit all the countries except Somalia.

Judith Lewis, the WFP's director in Ethiopia, said there was a possibility that food aid could run out by June unless formal pledges of cash assistance are made by the international community.

"We have had interest from donors but not formal pledges,'' she told The AP. "We need cash, which means we can get mobilized and can have food here within a month.''

CRS is working through local partners, including the Joint Relief Partnership, a unique union of faith-based organizations, to distribute upwards of 21,000 tons of food commodities including wheat, corn soy blend and vegetable oil to beneficiaries in the Tigray, Amhara and Oromiya regions of the country.

Ethiopia is one of the poorest and least developed countries on the world. The lives of those dependent on the nation's agriculture-based economy are imperiled during frequent periods of drought. Catholic Relief Services has been working in Ethiopia since 1957 and helped to save millions of lives in the country during a severe drought from 1984 to 1985.

Ethiopia also struggles with poor road conditions and infrastructure, which have been badly neglected during years of civil strife. Current food distribution efforts have been hampered by the ongoing war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, as the most convenient distribution route passes through war zones.

Catholic Relief Services is the official overseas relief and development agency of the U.S. Catholic community. Founded in 1943, the agency provides assistance to people in more than 80 countries. Catholic Relief Services provides assistance on the basis of need, not race, creed or nationality.

For more information about Catholic Relief Services and our programs around the world, visit our web site at www.catholicrelief.org.