12 nations agree to locust battle plan

DAKAR, Senegal -- Residents burned tires and children took to the streets with sticks in Senegal's capital yesterday to fight an invasion of locusts, as 12 West African nations agreed on a battle plan.

Agriculture ministers meeting in Dakar pledged to wage a military-style war on the airborne pests from bases in nine countries and called on donors to equip them with pesticide and planes as quickly as possible.

''The situation is extremely serious," said Habib Sy, Senegal's agriculture minister, at Dakar airport, where massive swarms of locusts attacked the long grass between the runways.

''The locusts can create a situation similar to war. If we don't watch out, the fallout could last for years," he said.

Residents are being urged to use any means they can to fight West Africa's worst infestation in 15 years, which threatens to trigger famine in a region where many people are subsistence farmers and governments lack the means to fight the pests.

''Burning tires seems to be working. [Locusts] fly overhead, but they don't land," said Mamadou Diallo, a carpenter in Dakar, as plumes of black smoke rose up in front of his house.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned last week that the locust swarms infesting countries from Mauritania to Chad could develop into a full-scale plague without additional foreign aid.

The large yellow insects thwacked into car windscreens as people drove to work and got tangled in the hair of people trying to shoo them from gardens.

In the residential district of Fenetre Mermoz overlooking the Atlantic ocean, locusts draped eucalyptus trees like snow, shrouding the nests of weaver birds hanging from branches.

The FAO has said $100 million is needed to fight the airborne invasion, but Abdoulaye Wade, Senegal's president, who hosted Tuesday's meeting of ministers, said he needed pesticides and aircraft, not cash.

Senegal's agriculture minister said the former French colony had not yet received a penny of aid from the FAO and that if the crisis continued, the nation may not export crops such as beans, melons, and mangoes to Europe this year.

Farmers across the region, backed by soldiers and agricultural specialists, have managed to spray just 3 percent of the area at risk, according to a joint statement issued at the Dakar conference.

In a 15-point plan, ministers agreed to set up operating bases in Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Chad, and Niger with support bases in Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Gambia, and Guinea.

Wade urged his neighbors to use their military might in the fight, and said the war was far from won.