NEWS ABOUT SOMALIA

This week, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia Mark Bowden accused Washington of "politicization of serious humanitarian issues" after negotiations aimed at releasing millions of dollars for Somalia stalled.

Rice called the World Food Program suspension of aid last month to parts of Somalia "an unfortunate development" but said the rebel group al Shabaab, fighting to overthrow the Western-backed government in Mogadishu, was to blame.

"No U.N. agency has paid any money to al Shabaab," Bowden told journalists in Nairobi on Wednesday. wFP spokesman Peter Smerdon in Nairobi on Wednesday also denied that food aid meant for Somali civilians was finding its way into the hands of al Shabaab, which controls much of southern and central Somalia. A WFP internal investigation had found no evidence of diversions to the group, Smerdon said.

The U.S. State Department said it remained concerned about the issue. "In the case of Somalia we do have concerns that aid was being diverted or money was exchanging hands," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said on Friday. "We're not going to pay a terrorism tax to al Shabaab."

"The U.S. is the largest donor of humanitarian assistance to Somalia," Rice said. "We have been consistently over many years."

Somalia has lacked an effective central government since 1991. An African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia is slowly being built up. It currently consists of about 5,200 troops and will eventually increase to 8,000. (Additional reporting by Andrew Quinn in Washington; Editing by Patrick Worsnip and Bill Trott).

NAIROBI (AlertNet) - In war-torn Somalia, daily life is a struggle for the 40 percent of the population who rely on humanitarian aid to survive, but in recent months green shoots have started to emerge. Good rains have boosted food production, reducing the number of people

dependent on handouts, and meat exports are picking up after Saudi Arabia lifted a long-standing ban. Experts say a little more support for farmers could go a long way towards easing the country's hunger crisis. Since August, the number of Somalis in need of aid has fallen from 3.76 million, about half the population, to 3.2 million, the U.N.'s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) said in a report this month.

"The reason we have seen a drop in the population in crisis is because of the good harvest in the south over the last six months," said Grainne Moloney, FSNAU's acting chief technical advisor. "It's over 250 percent of the harvest last year and about 150 percent of the harvest in the last five years." Decent October-to-December 'deyr' rains resulted in a bumper season for sorghum - which accounts for three-quarters of cereal production - as well as cash crops including sesame, vegetables, fruits, groundnuts and bananas.

This helped cut the proportion of the rural population in crisis in the south - which is mostly under the control of the hardline al Shabaab insurgent group - by 15 percent, the FSNAU says. BEYOND FOOD AID Somali agricultural consultant Ali Doy, who has worked with the United Nations, warns that focusing exclusively on emergency food aid risks selling subsistence farmers short. "People, especially in the countryside, which is not as insecure as urban centres, don't need food aid.

They need better ways to fight drought and better seeds, but the problem is few aid agencies are doing that now," he told AlertNet. Anarchy since the 1991 overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre has hampered exploitation of Somalia's rich agricultural land for nearly two decades. Doy said farmers lack equipment and knowledge, even though some have the determination to keep producing food amid conflict and poor rains. Fighting has killed 21,000 Somalis since the start