Regina O'Numb
War Child
Brown calls for support to double aid.
LONDON (Reuters) - Chancellor Gordon Brown has called again for the international community to back his plan to double aid to the world's poorest countries.
Brown made his appeal on Monday at a conference on globalisation designed to remind world leaders of their ambitious commitments at the turn of the century to dramatically reduce poverty by 2015.
Brown has been pressing other rich countries over the last year to back his proposal for an International Finance Facility (IFF), which would raise annual aid to poor countries to $100 billion (53 billion pounds) from the current $50 billion.
The plan requires donor countries to commit to payments right through until 2015. The IFF would then use these commitments as collateral for bonds issued in international capital markets to provide cash now to fund extra grants for health, education and debt relief.
A number of high-profile figures like the pope have backed the plan enthusiastically, but so far the IFF has not won the full endorsement of the Group of Seven rich nations.
"I ask all governments ...to immediately look seriously at our proposal for an International Finance Facility," Brown said.
He said support for the plan was growing. Brown and French Finance Minister Francis Mer are to hold a conference on the plan in April in Paris with representatives from 60 countries.
Irish rock superstar Bono, who was invited as a keynote speaker, threw his weight behind Brown's initiative, saying the world needed to "dramatise" development issues in the way London's Live Aid concert for Ethiopian famine victims did nearly twenty years ago.
Speaking via video link, the lead singer of U2 said: "We need you and (Prime Minister) Tony (Blair) to be the Lennon/McCartney of geopolitics. But what we need here is not love, all we need is here is passion."
Brown chimed in: "I believe we can work it out."
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040216/325/em1sc.html
LONDON (Reuters) - Chancellor Gordon Brown has called again for the international community to back his plan to double aid to the world's poorest countries.
Brown made his appeal on Monday at a conference on globalisation designed to remind world leaders of their ambitious commitments at the turn of the century to dramatically reduce poverty by 2015.
Brown has been pressing other rich countries over the last year to back his proposal for an International Finance Facility (IFF), which would raise annual aid to poor countries to $100 billion (53 billion pounds) from the current $50 billion.
The plan requires donor countries to commit to payments right through until 2015. The IFF would then use these commitments as collateral for bonds issued in international capital markets to provide cash now to fund extra grants for health, education and debt relief.
A number of high-profile figures like the pope have backed the plan enthusiastically, but so far the IFF has not won the full endorsement of the Group of Seven rich nations.
"I ask all governments ...to immediately look seriously at our proposal for an International Finance Facility," Brown said.
He said support for the plan was growing. Brown and French Finance Minister Francis Mer are to hold a conference on the plan in April in Paris with representatives from 60 countries.
Irish rock superstar Bono, who was invited as a keynote speaker, threw his weight behind Brown's initiative, saying the world needed to "dramatise" development issues in the way London's Live Aid concert for Ethiopian famine victims did nearly twenty years ago.
Speaking via video link, the lead singer of U2 said: "We need you and (Prime Minister) Tony (Blair) to be the Lennon/McCartney of geopolitics. But what we need here is not love, all we need is here is passion."
Brown chimed in: "I believe we can work it out."
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040216/325/em1sc.html
