In his speech to the D-8 summit of the developing countries, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak urged launching an international dialogue between the food exporting and importing countries with a view to outlining a solution to the current food crisis that is now gripping thw world.
In his speech, the Egyptian president noted that several challenges are now facing the world. The new developments we see these days including rocketing food and fuel prices and signs of an international economy stagnation that are looming in the horizon are actually constituting a big challenge to our efforts aimed at realizing sustainable development and growth rates required to implement the national development plans and the Millennium Development Goals.
These crises involve several interwoven difficulties at the economic, social and environmental levels. These crises will have their unfavorable consequences on all countries; the developed and the developing alike and at a more dangerous way on the less developing countries, added the president in his speech, that was read out on his behalf by Egyptian Minister of International Cooperation Fayza Abul Naga..

The root causes of the current food crisis go back to the past three decades at least. This is why we should adopt a well-studied methodology with a view to reaching sustainable solutions that could pool the efforts of the international community in a bid to put them into effect.
These solutions should be based on finding out a way to deal with the expanding gap between the supply and demand of food.
Within this framework, we think there is a need to move at the national, regional and international levels. Egypt is due to outline a national strategy for pooling together all agricultural resources and works to discuss vistas of cooperation with neighboring countries that are sharing with it the Nile water.

Speech by President Hosni Mubarak to the D-8 Developing Countries Summit