Hassan, 80, had pushed his family and his cattle for weeks to reach the Jerrer Valley's muddy watering holes, the only unfailing water for hundreds of miles around.

The cattle died along the way, one by one, until all were gone by the time he reached the wells. By then, it was the turn of his eight children. His 15-year-old boy died a week ago. Two days ago, it was his 17-year-old son.

''We came because of the drought in our area,'' said Hassan, who has been stranded at the wells for three months. ''There was absolutely nothing, no grass, no water -- there was no reason to remain.''

In the past six months, thousands of roaming herders like Hassan have streamed into the Jerrer Valley, 430 miles southeast of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

There's no government aid here, nor international relief, although the U.N. special envoy for the Horn of Africa, Catherine Bertini, is on a weeklong visit to the region to assess the needs of the millions threatened by the drought. An estimated 7.7 million Ethiopians face food shortages.

''Life is desperate,'' said Hassan. ''We are all beggars, and people are dying daily.''

The nomads rely on local people to survive. The scenario fulfills a fear held by aid agencies: Drought victims overwhelm the few areas where there is food, water, or both -- straining local resources to the breaking point.

''The locals have a problem with these people who come from the east,'' elder Jama Abraham said. ''We are feeling more pressure because we have lost our livestock and cannot help. If we could help, we would, but we can do nothing.''

The U.N. World Food Program believes some locals have become so desperate they are entering refugee camps in the area -- run for people who escaped fighting in neighboring Somalia -- in search of food.

One of the worst-affected areas is Ethiopia's Somali region, which includes the Jerrer Valley, where 70 percent of the people are nomadic herders.

In Addis Ababa on Thursday, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told reporters that enough of the 836,800 tons of food that the government has requested has been pledged to avert disaster.

Meles also said the country's 23-month-old border war with neighboring Eritrea would not be halted because of the famine.

Residents said the government conscripted thousands of local men for the war effort in June and also took 20,000 sheep and cattle.

The eight refugee camps in the region, which provide shelter to about 166,000 people displaced from neighboring Somalia, receive regular food from aid organizations while the local Ethiopians in Jerrer Valley -- 17 miles from a camp, receive nothing.

The World Food Program says it has yet to fully assess the needs in the area, and cannot distribute food until it does.

''I am a farmer, but for two years I have done nothing'' because of the drought, said Mohammed Abdulli, an 80-year-old who tills a small plot of land nearby.

Two of his three wives died in the last month, Abdulli said; his 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son died three days ago.

Speaking after meeting with the visiting director of the UN World Food Program (WFP) Catherine Bertini, Meles said: "The pledges that have been made ... give us a realistic chance to avert the disaster." He added: "I do not believe there will be a famine in this country for two reasons. We will not allow it to happen, and the indications are that the food which will avert the disaster may be forthcoming."

The prime minister rejected charges that the government is not doing enough in the face of the looming famine, saying: "While we have no intention of rolling over when some engage in the business of spreading untruth in a vain effort to find a scapegoat, we would much prefer to focus all our attention on saving lives."

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had said Sunday that the Ethiopian government was failing to distribute aid "properly" and criticised Addis Ababa for continuing to spend money on the border war with Eritrea, saying it hampered the distribution of supplies.

Meles said he expressed to Bertini his government's "strong opposition to any attempt to link the drought relief program with the conflict imposed on Ethiopia by Eritrea."

Meles reaffirmed that Ethiopia wanted -- by peaceful means or by force -- to regain territory it accuses Eritrea of occupying.

"You do at the same time what you can to save lives and at the same time defend your soil," he said. "The choice between relief programs and protection of our sovereignty is a false choice."

He said a number of soldiers had been deployed to help distribute food.

While acknowledging that security was not fully assured in the southeast, where a three-year drought has hit the hardest, Meles said "these incidents are in no position to jeopardize the relief program."

Bertini, a special envoy of Annan, on Wednesday began a tour of the Horn of Africa to evaluate the effects of the drought, which the United Nations estimates affects some 12 million people in the region overall.

She is also due to make stops in Djibouti, Eritrea and Kenya.

After three years of drought, tens or hundreds of thousands of people in southeastern Ethiopia are starving, mainly around Gode, 600 kilometersmiles) from the capital Addis Ababa, and in Ogaden, where children are dying of starvation every day.

"This is a small region but it is a serious problem," Bertini said Wednesday without using the term famine after visiting a nutrition center and hospital in Gode.

More than 7.5 million people, mainly small farmers, will need food aid over the course of the year, according to the WFP and Ethiopian authorities.

Now the northwestern Amhara region is also bracing for the effects of drought, the regional disaster prevention committee said Thursday.

Ethiopia had estimated at the start of the year, after a joint evaluation mission with UN agencies, that it would need 836,000 tonnes of food aide in 2000, a figure that is bound to rise in view of the failure of the February-to-April rains.

Appeals for assistance and media immages of skeletal children recalling the great Ethiopian famine of 1984-85 have prompted donors to step up aid pledges.

The United States said it would supply and additional 325,000 tonnes of aid, according to Doug Shelton, local representative of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), while the European Union pledged 432,000 tonnes.

''If some are engaged in the business of spreading untruths in vain efforts to find a scapegoat, we would prefer to focus all our attention on saving lives,'' Meles told reporters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

Meles, who met U.N. World Food Program chief Catherine Bertini sent by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to assess the food shortage in the Horn of Africa, said: ''I hope her visit to our country will mark a new beginning in the chapter of this saga where humanitarian issues are separated from political issues.''

Meles apparently was responding to criticism that his government had neglected the welfare of its citizens to pursue its 23-month-old border conflict with Eritrea.

Eritrea has agreed to a framework peace accord put forward by the Organization of African Unity and the United States. But Ethiopia objects to certain aspects of implementation.

Asked whether he was putting pursuit of the war over sections of the 620-mile border before the needs of his people, Meles replied that ''in Ethiopia, we do not wait to have a full tummy in order to protect our sovereignty. If this had been the case, Ethiopia would never be independent.''

In London, Digby Waller, defense economist at the independent International Institute for Strategic Studies, said both Ethiopia and Eritrea among the world's 10 poorest countries had tripled their defense budgets from 1998 to 1999.

Ethiopia's defense budget last year was $467 million, and Eritrea's was $236 million, Waller said. He said the greater part of both budgets were used to obtain weapons and ammunition from Russia and Israel.

Last week, Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin accused the international community of failing to respond to Ethiopia's appeals for relief food.

But Meles said pledges received gave the government the resources to avert disaster even if the short rains, which should have begun a month ago, fail entirely.

Asked whether his government had done enough to alleviate the effects of the drought, he replied: ''Ultimately, the state has to be able to produce food ... but we have done all we can with limited resources.

He said the cycle of drought has not been broken ''because the rate of agricultural growth has not been fast enough, and drought is becoming more and more a normal phenomenon.''

Ethiopia overall in 1999 marked its third-best harvest on record, although the famine area is now in its third year of sparse rain and crop failures.

The United States, the largest supplier of relief food to the World Food Program, has pledged 500,000 tons. It alrady has flown in one 40-ton shipment and is sending another 40-ton shipment this weekend.

The European Union had also announced a 435,000-ton contribution.

Unilever, arguably among the leading food and personal care items with over 1000 brands worldwide, said they will engage in soaps and detergent manufacturing industry in Ethiopia-for which they were promised to get their investment license very shortly.

Speaking at a reception cocktail at the Sheraton Addis Monday evening, Dr. Manfred Stach, President of Unilever Africa Business Group, UK, said his company believes "there is good prospect to grow in Africa."

Dr. Stach and Senior Vice President Adriano Regondi were on a working tour to Ethiopia, apparently to introduce the launching of his company's business in Ethiopia.

"Why do we come to Ethiopia?" asked Stach. And gives the answer: "To build the business in partnership with local partners."

Stach also announced what he called "a small contribution of $12,000 to the famine situation in Ethiopia."

Ato Taddese Haile, General Manager of the Ethiopian Investment Authority, the state agency responsible for the licensing of investors, said: "I am very glad to welcome Unilever as a development partners to Ethiopia." The official also said that Unilever's application was quickly processed at the investment office. "We have competitive advantage particularly in the agricultural sector," Taddese said adding that Ethiopia's macro-economic stability is satisfactory.

Mr. Anup Gupta, country manager Unilever Ethiopia & Horn Region of Africa, confirmed that the investment office authorities "gave quick response" in processing the license application for the tea, detergents and soap industry.

Gupta said the initial investment of the joint venture with Almeta is $300,000 and that the items to be produced are tea, soaps, detergents as well as vaseline and vim in the first phase with more expansion plans in the future. But he declined to give other details on the combined capital investment for the various factories to be set up saying he did not want to speak before it is mature.

Many of the food and personal care products Unilever markets such as Lipton tea, Lux toilet soap, Omo powder soap and a range of cosmetic items are already familiar to Ethiopian consumers for several decades now.

Unilever are in Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Malawi and eight other western and southern African countries providing employment to over 50,000 employees in the continent.

It claims to be the world's largest tea producer; and in Kenya alone it's tea plantation employs 20,000 people for whom it provides housing along with their 80,000 dependents.

Catherine Bertini, the U.N. envoy to the Horn of Africa, said an original assessment that indicated 100,000 of Djibouti's 662,000 people need emergency food will likely be revised upward to 150,000.

"We have found in Ethiopia and here in Djibouti that statistics drawn up and based on the assessments in November and December are wrong because more people are in need,'' said Bertini, who is also head of the U.N. World Food Program.

Bertini was scheduled to arrive in neighboring Eritrea later Saturday where 350,000 of the 3.5 million population were estimated in November to need food. That figure will also be revised upward, she said.

Djibouti, a minuscule former French territory tucked in the crook of the Horn of Africa on the Gulf of Aden, has become Ethiopia's main port since a 23-month border conflict with Eritrea has shut off the Red Sea ports of Massawa and Assaba.

Bertini was in Djibouti to assess the port's capacity to deal with more than 500,000 tons of relief food that will arrive in the coming months.

Djibouti's population is made up of nomadic Afars and ethnic Somalis. Most of the people who need emergency food aid are nomads living outside Djibouti-Ville, the country's principal town.