HIGHLIGHTS: Delegates Critical About Proliferation of Biotech Crops & Complain About Inaction to End World Hunger||Italy Defends Absence of Western Leaders From Summit||Food Diversity (Key component to Food Security) Lost, Thanks to U.S. Biotech Corporations|| STORY: The U.N. World Food Summit ended in Rome Thursday much as it began, with criticism about the proliferation of biotech crops and complaints that too little has been done to end world hunger. (Read photo caption)

Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi presided over the closing ceremony, proclaiming the summit "extremely useful" and dismissing criticism that it had floundered because Western leaders stayed away.

He ticked off figures of those who did attend: 6,613 participants, 74 heads of state or government, 181 countries represented, and 1,000 organizations.

Jacques Diouf, director-general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, thanked those who did come for having given the 800 million hungry people in the world "some hope again in a better future."

Critics say the delegates' pledge to reduce the number of hungry to 400 million by 2015 wasn't enough, since the goal was set at a similar summit in 1996 and the number of underfed people has remained the same.

Environmental groups complained the summit took a step backward because it called for advancement in biotech research.

They said food security rests in biological diversity, which they said is being lost through high-yield varieties of seeds being pushed by U.S. biotech corporations.

To try to maintain crop biodiversity, a group of organizations announced the creation Wednesday of a permanent endowment to conserve seeds. They are seeking 260 million U.S. dollars from donors to maintain gene banks that would give farmers around the globe access to a variety of seeds and plant materials.

PHOTO CAPTION

Iraq's Agriculture minister Mohamed Abdul Illah delivers his speech during the third day of the World Food Summit in the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters in Rome, Wednesday, June 12, 2002. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)