The Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, has made an urgent appeal for 1.4 million metric tons of food aid, as his country faces a famine potentially as severe as the 1984 crisis.

The United Nations says it has enough food to last until early next year, but the needs for the rest of 2003 are still to be met.

Across Ethiopia, just over 11 million people are facing starvation.

Mr Meles told the BBC that he had already secured World Bank guarantees of up to $100m in aid - but that would only be used as a last resort if donors failed to respond to the appeal.

The executive director of the UN children's fund (Unicef), Carol Bellamy, has said the world needs to act now to deal with the food crisis triggered by drought.

After visiting one of the worst affected areas she warned of the dangers of donor fatigue, saying the international community must not wait for deaths from starvation.

Need

BBC East Africa correspondent Andrew Harding says that in arid north-eastern Ethiopia many communities have already lost most of their cattle and the animals' skeletons lie in the dust.

Thousands of people are on the move, walking huge distances in search of aid.

As many as 11 million Ethiopians need help next year

"I hope the donor community this time will respond without delay to avert the crisis from taking place," Ms Bellamy said.

She added that Ethiopia itself needed to look at improving irrigation, developing drought-resistant crops and digging more wells.

The total aid package that the Ethiopian Government and UN are requesting is worth about $575m.

The country's harvest is almost in and the scale of the current crisis is apparent.

The amount of food aid requested by the Ethiopian Government is approximately what the international community has been expecting.

But the government has already blamed donor fatigue for the looming crisis and says that unless donors respond swiftly many people will die.

Last month, the Ethiopian Government warned that the country faced a famine worse than that of 1984 which killed nearly one million people and sparked a major international relief effort.