Quote of note:
At the same time, the G8 is launching a multi-year scheme to train African troops for peace-keeping missions in the continent. The aim is to have 75,000 troops trained by 2010. Britain's contribution to the project will rise to $12m annually when the scheme is in full swing.
G8 fails to write off Africa's debt but promises help for Aids vaccine
By Rupert Cornwell in Savannah
11 June 2004
- G8 fails to write off Africa's debt but promises help for Aids vaccine
- Gleneagles to host G8 conference in 2005
- Bush gives up on more Nato troops for Iraq
- UN urged to quell ethnic attacks in Sudan
After a brief show of unity, the divisions over the war in Iraq have opened up again
The leading industrial powers plan to help Africa by developing an anti-Aids vaccine and training thousands of new peace-keepers, but did not come up with the hoped for breakthrough on forgiving debt for the world's poorest countries, almost all of them African.
The announcements came as part of an "Africa Outreach" at the final session of the G8 summit that was attended by six African heads of government.
For all its outward cordiality, the three days of talks at the Sea Island resort south of here failed to produce any spectacular new agreements to boost host President George Bush in his campaign for re-election this autumn. Indeed, if the White House was expecting any lift from the summit, and from the deal on the 30 June transfer of sovereignty in Iraq, those hopes were dashed by an opinion poll yesterday showing John Kerry ahead by 51 per cent to 44. The margin is among the biggest yet for the Democratic challenger.
To further the battle against Aids, which is now killing 6,300 people in Africa every day, the US is to contribute $15m (£8m) to a worldwide drive to speed up development for a vaccine against the disease.
At the same time, the G8 is launching a multi-year scheme to train African troops for peace-keeping missions in the continent. The aim is to have 75,000 troops trained by 2010. Britain's contribution to the project will rise to $12m annually when the scheme is in full swing.
The "Outreach" drew mixed feelings, however. "We can expect to be portrayed in some quarters as mendicants," President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa said in a newspaper interview published yesterday. Mr Mbeki was one of six African leaders on Sea Island yesterday, along with the presidents of Nigeria, Algeria, Uganda, Ghana and Senegal. There will also be anger that the summit failed to come up with the debt-relief package for which non-government organisations and aid groups were hoping, involving a 100 per cent cancellation of multilateral debt owed by the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC), and the conversion of all borrowings into grants.
Almost every HIPC country is in Africa, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa where real per capita income has fallen in the past 30 years. Instead, the G8 has merely approved a "top-up" of funding for the existing scheme to help the HIPC countries, and a two-year extension to December 2006 of the period in which the poorest countries can apply for assistance under the scheme.
Total cancellation of official debt to the HIPC countries has been strongly backed by Britain, but it appears to have run into continuing objections from Japan and Germany and fallen foul of the argument raging over precisely how much of Iraq's Saddam-era debt of $120bn should be forgiven.
The US and Britain had been pressing for almost total cancellation of Iraqi debt, but France insists that Iraq, with its oil riches, should not be treated any more favourably than the poorest Third World nations. As a result both initiatives have stalled, temporarily at least, to the dismay of the NGOs.
Posted by P6 at June 11, 2004 10:07 AM
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Comments
Ellis island south. My great-great was a kid there, her folks were indetured servants who took the name of the shipping company. McNabbs were notorious for their underhanded entitlement/human cargo tactics...
Just puts it in perspective for the working class.