BIG FAMINE THREATENS BIAFRANS

FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
NOVEMBER and December will bring the severest famine that Biafra has yet experienced in the war, said Fr. Tony Byrne, director of the Caritas operation in the region, at a Press conference in Dublin last week.
He was in Dublin to enlist staff for child evacuation projects. He said that 3,000 children were registered to leave the area under Caritas schemes.
Bishop Whelan of Owerri, himself a refugee in a mission station. told the Press conference in a letter that the food position was "hopeless" and the war "a holocaust of a hundred thOusand little ones." Refugees had pulled up crops, so there will be little to harvest this year.
CRITICISM DENIED Mr. Aiken, Irish Republic External Affairs Minister, said last week that neither he nor Chief Enahoro, Nigerian Commissioner for Information and Labour. had made allegations that Irish Holy Ghost missionaries were involved in gunrunning in the Nigeria-Biafra conflict.
Chief Enahoro visited Mr. Aiken last Wednesday morning with Brigadier B. C. Ogundipe, Nigerian Ambassador to Ireland, and, according to the Minister, "expressed himself as being unhappy in regard to the political activities of some of the Holy Ghost fathers and stated that he could only hope that things would not get worse."
The suggestion that either the Minister or Chief Enahoro had made allegations about gunrunning was published in a Dublin morning newspaper and drew a sharp denial from the Nigerian Embassy.