There are three million people who are going to starve to death in the next few weeks unless something is done. Jeremy Thorpe, Liberal Party leader

Acting president of the ICRC, Jacques Freymond, said the world must put pressure on Nigeria to allow his organisation to carry out its humanitarian mission.

In London, more than 80 backbench MPs signed an all-party motion urging the British Government to take action towards resuming the relief operation and to stop selling arms to Nigeria.

The Foreign Secretary, Michael Stewart, said representatives in Lagos would try to mediate between the ICRC and the Nigerian Government.

Yesterday, Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe said he had written to the head of the United Nations, U Thant, asking him to organise a major relief effort with the Red Cross.

He said he was making his appeal independently of the British Government whose involvement in the Nigerian civil war was "immoral".

He told the Times newspaper: "There are three million people who are going to starve to death in the next few weeks unless something is done."

Biafra, under Lieutenant-Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, is made up of the former Eastern Region of Nigeria mainly inhabited by Igbo, or Ibo, people.

In September 1966 thousands of the Igbo minority in the Northern Region were massacred by the majority Hausa who resented their relative prosperity.

As a result, a million Igbo refugees settled in the Eastern Region and expelled non-Igbos.

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