new article on the summit
Warning. This depressed me. Let's NOT give up...like Bono said!
By Karen DeYoung and DeNeen L. Brown
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 28, 2002; Page A19
CALGARY, Alberta, June 27 -- The world's seven leading industrial democracies and Russia agreed today to a "new deal" to help lift African countries out of poverty, but sidestepped appeals to firmly commit at least half of pledged increases in foreign aid to pay for it.
Leaders of the Group of Eight, holding their annual summit at a resort 60 miles west of here, also agreed to spend up to $20 billion over the next 10 years in a coordinated effort to help former Soviet republics decommission nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction and keep them from terrorist hands.
President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said the nonproliferation pact, in which group members agreed to collectively match a U.S. contribution of $10 billion to safeguard and destroy nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, is an "important initiative," and that its approval was a major victory for Bush.
But some of Bush's summit partners were less pleased with the U.S. position on African aid. International development experts expressed disappointment, saying G-8 members failed to acknowledge that their domestic agricultural subsidies, particularly the massive farm bill that Bush recently signed, take far more money away from Africans by impeding exports than the rich nations dole out in foreign aid.
Nor was there agreement to devote major new funding to international debt reduction efforts, beyond covering $1 billion in shortfalls in the current program. The leaders also did not move to firm up an earlier pledge to educate the world's children by adopting a coordinated and well-funded plan.
"It's all words, no action; all promises, no commitments," said Gene Sperling, director of the Washington-based Center on Universal Education at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former organizer of G-8 summits as President Clinton's economic policy director. "It's such a shame, such a letdown for the world's poorest children."
Prime Ministers Jean Chretien of Canada and Tony Blair of Britain, both leading advocates of a major new Africa initiative, called the G-8 agreement "a new beginning and a fresh hope for the African continent." But Chretien acknowledged that many would question why there was no firm financial commitment or any movement on reducing trade barriers.
The Kananaskis summit, named after the isolated mountain resort where the meeting was held, "will be remembered as where we have acted collectively to make sure that globalization benefits all the citizens of the globe and that no continent should be left behind," Chretien said.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo was one of four African presidents who traveled here to listen to the G-8's response to the partnership, which was first proposed at last year's summit in Genoa, Italy.
"We are satisfied with this commitment," Obasanjo said, but added that "nothing that is human can be regarded as perfect."
Rice put the Africa program far down on the list in her own assessment of the meeting. "This summit was extremely important for a number of the president's foreign policy priorities," she said, noting that "the president's agenda was moved forward substantially" with the nonproliferation agreement and a separate accord on transport security.
The Africa agreement provides that development assistance should be based on a partnership in which recipients agree to be eligible for assistance only if they implement political and social reforms, and adopt free-market economic policies.
The Africans have said they will not only follow through on their pledges, but will police each other. "If any of us is lagging behind," Obasanjo said, "we will give him the push or give him the sanction."
Questions about Bush's new Middle East policy -- which seeks to replace Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat -- raised by his G-8 colleagues from Germany, Japan, Russia, Italy and France in addition to Canada and Britain, dominated much of the informal summit discussion, as well as a dinner last night.
Although most leaders tried to sidestep the controversy in post-summit news conferences this afternoon, Russian President Vladimir Putin called it "one of the most difficult issues we discussed." Arafat, Putin said, "is recognized as the legitimate leader of the Palestinians -- it would be counterproductive to resolve any issues without his cooperation."
Bush, in an apparent hurry to get back to Washington, was the only leader not to make a post-summit appearance to answer reporters' questions. He left for home an hour ahead of schedule.
U.N. members, including the United States, pledged two years ago to cut world poverty in half by 2015, a target that the U.N. Development Program this week said only 10 of the 45 sub-Saharan countries are currently on track to achieve.
The United States spends less than one-tenth of 1 percent of its gross national product on foreign aid, the lowest in the developed world. At a meeting in March on international development in Monterrey, Mexico, Bush pledged to increase U.S. assistance to worthy recipients by 50 percent, to $15 billion a year, over five years.
Bush last week pledged an additional $300 million in spending on international HIV/AIDS in 2004, and said he would double U.S. aid to education in Africa, to $200 million over the next five years.
Overall, donors at Monterrey pledged $12 billion in new assistance per year by 2006, and the World Bank, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and others have said that at least half of that money should be devoted to Africa.
European sources said Bush told his colleagues today that he could not make such a commitment without congressional approval. The plan provides for each country to decide how much to spend in accordance with respective priorities and procedures.
? 2002 The Washington Post Company