The World Food Programme said Wednesday that it has signed a new food aid deal to allow the UN agency to provide 350,000 tonnes of grain to millions in the strife-torn country.

`The agreement is part of our long-standing partnership with the goverment of Zimbabwe. It runs until April 2010,` said WFP spokesman Richard Lee.

The 500-million-dollar agreement will provide food relief to poverty-stricken Zimbabweans over the next two years.

WFP`s representative in Zimbabwe, Bahre Gessesse said in the state media that two thirds of the 350,000 tonnes had already been secured and was being distributed.

`In October alone, we reached two million people and we expect to reach out to 2.5 million people in November, and the number is expected to rise,` Gessesse said in the state-run Herald newspaper.

The WFP estimates that in January about five million people will need emergency food aid -- nearly half the population.

Gessesse said that the Consortium for Southern African Food Emergency (C-Safe) would provide an additional 567,492 tonnes of food to Zimbabwe.

In June, President Robert Mugabe`s government attracted widespread condemnation after it suspended the operations of aid agencies. He accused them of using food to direct people to vote for the opposition in the March 29 general elections.

The ban was lifted in August.

Once hailed as a model economy and a regional breadbasket, Zimbabwe`s fortunes have nosedived since 2000 when Mugabe seized white-owned farms and handed them over to landless blacks without providing training or support for them to succeed.