Non-Aligned first ladies hold summit on women in farming

ROME (AFP) - First ladies from countries of the Non-Aligned Movement, including the wife of Irans President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, held a summit on agriculture in Rome Sunday on the eve UN talks on world hunger.
The meeting was chaired by Suzanne Sabet, the wife of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and focused on the role of women in farming and their access to productive resources.
A report presented at the summit by Coldiretti, Italys main farmers association, underscored the key role of women in the sector who make up 40 percent of the agricultural workforce.
According to the International Labour Organisation, 428 million women and 608 million men work in agriculture.
Azam Al Sadat Farahi, the wife of Irans president, also took part in the summit even though her country does not have diplomatic relations with Egypt. Ahmadinejad is not attending the UN Food and Agriculture Organisations summit on food security, which starts Monday.
Cairo and Tehran broke off diplomatic ties a year after Islamic revolutionaries overthrew the pro-Western shah of Iran in 1979.
Iran opposed Egypts 1979 peace treaty with Israel and named a street in Tehran after the assassin of then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who was killed by an Egyptian militant in 1981.