By Diadie Ba DAKAR, May 9 (Reuters) - Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade has threatened to sue the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) if it does not repay running costs deducted from funds raised to help Africa cope with high food prices. Facing growing domestic discontent over food inflation, Wade launched a scathing attack on the FAO this week, branding it a "bottomless pit of money largely spent on its own functioning with very little effective operations on the ground". The FAO is led by fellow Senegalese Jacques Diouf, who once served as minister in a government led by the Socialist Party whose 40-year rule Wade overturned in a 2000 election. In a comments televised on Thursday night, the outspoken octogenarian president said he had been in contact with officials at the Rome-based agency to discuss his complaints. "I told them 'If you carry on I will take you to court. You must repay the 20 percent of the money collected in our names'," Wade said in his address, which was translated from Senegal's Wolof language by national news agency APS on Friday. "They deduct 20 percent of the money collected in Africa's name to run the FAO. I told them those who created the FAO should fund its running costs," he said. The FAO was created at the end of World War Two in 1945, when most of Africa was ruled by European colonial powers. Wade also called earlier this week for the FAO to be folded into a newer U.N. agency, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, to create a global agriculture-support body, which he said should be headquartered in Africa. A U.S.-funded review of the FAO said last year it was badly governed, failing the people it was meant to serve and risked falling into "terminal decline" unless it made major changes. "WHERE'S THE MONEY GOING?" FAO chief Diouf told Wade to take responsibility for his own country rather than blaming international agencies. "The FAO's role is advisory, a support role. The FAO offers technical expertise. Every country decides its own priorities. It is enough to look at the spending going to the country's agriculture compared to other sectors," Diouf told Radio France International in an interview broadcast on Friday. Diouf said Wade should consider how much Senegal had spent hosting the Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit in March, for which major roads in the city were relaid and other projects started with a combination of national and donor funds. Foundations were even laid for a string of luxury hotels -- though none were ready in time for the summit. "Look at all the expenditure on infrastructure for the OIC summit etc, etc. That is a recent thing, but you must make an objective analysis of the structure of the national budget. Where is the money going? These are decisions for the government, not the responsibility of the FAO," he said. Senegal is one of Africa's top recipients of foreign aid and one of the world's biggest importers of food per capita. Like a number of other West African countries, Senegal has witnessed riots over high food and fuel prices in recent months. Wade has tried to promote an agricultural renaissance in Senegal with few results so far. Last month, he announced a "Great Agricultural Offensive for Food and Abundance" to increase farming output and make the import-dependent nation self-sufficient in food staples, especially rice. Experts said the plan was ambitious. (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com) (Writing by Alistair Thomson; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
Activists of the Communist Party of India (CPI) burn an effigy of U.S. President George W. Bush during a protest in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad May 9, 2008. A ...
