G-8 Leaders Agree on $50B in African Aid
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050708/ap_on_re_eu/g8
"With a last-minute pledge from Japan, Blair won a key victory, announcing that aid to Africa would rise from the current $25 billion annually to $50 billion by 2010.
Blair, however, lost in his push to get all summit countries to commit to boosting foreign aid to an amount equal to 0.7 percent of national income by 2015. Instead, a summit document said the European Union had agreed to that support but did not mention the United States.
President Bush had refused to be bound by the 0.7 percent target. The United States is currently giving 0.16 percent of national income, the smallest percentage of any of the G-8 countries.
Blair ticked off a list of accomplishments from a meeting that nonetheless produced less than he had hoped going in. The major failure was in the area of global warming, where staunch opposition from Bush thwarted Blair's efforts to get a U.S. commitment to firm targets for reducing the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for warming the earth's atmosphere.
Aside from the massive increase in aid for the African continent, leaders signaled support for new deals on trade, endorsed cancellation of the debt of 18 of the world's poorest nations, pledged universal access to AIDS treatment, renewed their commitment to a peacekeeping force in Africa and heard African leaders promise to move toward democracies that follow the rule of law, he said."