Photo: Leader of the Revolution Muammar Gaddafi, (L) is greeted by Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Food Security Summit in Rome November 16, 2009.

Speaking on behalf of the African Union at The three-day World Food Summit organised by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, the President of the AU Muammar Gaddafi said "it is regrettable that the rich did not attend this conference. It is a clear message to all of us that the rich have decided not to contribute to the solution of the world food security."

But he also said that those who stole the Third World's wealth could run but could not hide. "The pursuit is ongoing of those who robbed our wealth, whether they attended this conference or they did not. We will continue to demand them and pursue them. Time is endless," Gaddafi stressed.

The President of the AU said: "We are not begging them and we are not beggars. We are demanding a right that has been usurped.”

We are demanding the price, the return of the debt to its owners, and the compensating of those whose wealth was robbed."

The AU President said "this conference is meant to collect resources, aid and promote policies to help the poor… this absence of the rich indicates they do not want to contribute to the program. This is natural as no one gives his money to the other..."

"This means that each one of us must find his way in solving the problem of poverty by rationalizing their resources..."

The absence of the rich, Gaddafi insisted, was a message that curtails all hope that the world would cooperate in order to end poverty.

Gaddafi said it was the Third World, particularly Africa, which is suffering more from poverty and where scores of children are dying every second.

Gaddafi told the FAO summit the reason why poverty is affecting Africa, Latin American and most of Asia is because colonialists robbed and looted their wealth for centuries.

European colonial powers as well as others are indebted to the peoples and countries they occupied and ransacked.

The rich have no right not to help the poor in these formerly occupied countries and regions, Gaddafi said. "The amounts that these powers have pledged to poor nations as aid cover only a tiny part of the huge wealth they ransacked from the Third World during colonialism," he added.

Gaddafi strongly condemned the rich whom he said were "spending trillions of our money that they have stolen from us on armaments only to keep on killing human beings."

Directing his words to the large gathering of heads of state and government in Rome, Gaddafi questioned why those powers would not give up the arms race and cancel their nuclear weapons' programs and at the same time use at least part of that trillion and a half for fighting poverty."

"What is being practiced now is hypocrisy at its worst forms, but it is a hypocrisy that is exposed," Gaddafi added.

"Sympathizing and shedding tears on the poor when they are spending a trillion and a half dollar on weapons are in fact sheer deception, contradiction and hypocrisy," Gaddafi said.

The President of the African Union made it clear that there were two highly important issues that the FAO should take them into deep considerations. The first is to bring an end to the monopoly of seeds.

Gaddafi said seeds are now being monopolized by some multinational satanic companies aiming to control food all over the world and these need to be stopped.

FAO should establish its own local seed banks in each country and improve these seeds in order for the world to be secure about its food, Gaddafi recommended.

The second important issue mentioned by the African Union President at the UN Hunger Summit in Rome is what he called the "New Feudalism".

Gaddafi warned the crowed from the existence of a pattern according to which foreign rich individuals and companies systematically taking control of agriculture lands, especially in Africa, at a very low price.

This systemic usurping of African lands, Gaddafi said, must be stopped. "This invasion must stop. The Africans must stop it," Gaddafi demanded.

Gaddafi called on the FAO summit to move quickly and save the Lake of Chad and the Nile Delta.

Gaddafi also mentioned the Aral Sea and said it needs attention in order to help peoples to fight hunger.

Once the world's fourth-largest inland saline body of water, with an area of 68,000 km2, the Aral Sea has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s.

By 2007 it had declined to 10% of its original size, splitting into three separate lakes - the North Aral Sea and the eastern and western basins of the once far larger South Aral Sea.

By 2009, the south-eastern lake had disappeared and the south-western lake retreated to a thin strip at the extreme west of the former southern sea.