Bowing to U.S. and Japan, UN drops aid targets

Bowing to U.S. and Japan, UN drops aid targets

Irwin Arieff
Reuters
United Nations

Bowing to U.S. and Japanese objections, organizers of a U.N.
conference on development financing said on Monday they had
dropped plans to set a goal for rich nations of doubling foreign
aid within the next few years.

A declaration to be adopted at the International Conference on
Financing for Development, opening March 18 in Monterrey, Mexico,
will instead urge wealthy nations to make "concrete efforts" to
give substantially more aid and will set no timetable for aid
donations to go up.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had urged conference
planners to set a target for industrialized nations to double
their official development assistance over the next two to three
years, a move that would pour an additional US$50 billion a year
into such government-to-government aid.

The Monterrey conference is the centerpiece of Annan's
campaign to press governments, businesses, investment firms and
international organizations to do more to help the world's
poorest citizens share in the benefits of globalization.

The United Nations has been urging rich nations for three
decades to set aside 0.7 percent of their gross national product
for development aid, but with little success.

Only five countries now do so -- Denmark, Luxembourg, the
Netherlands, Norway and Sweden -- and a sixth country, Ireland,
has committed to do so, although the general objective has been
embraced by others, including the 15-nation European Union.

For the United States -- whose $10 trillion economy is the
world's largest -- to meet this goal would cost it some $70
billion a year, compared to the $10 billion it now gives each
year in official development assistance.

Even doubling official development assistance would cost
Washington another $10 billion, a figure officials reject as too
costly.

As for Tokyo, whose more than $10 billion a year in official
development assistance makes it the world's biggest aid donor, it
has been cutting back on aid recently as its economy suffers
through a period of prolonged weakness.

The drafting of the conference declaration, which wrapped up
over the weekend, may have been complicated by word that U.S.
President George W. Bush may attend the Monterrey conference,
diplomats said.

A decision has not been announced, but it could have been
embarrassing for him to attend had the draft declaration set a
goal the United States was unwilling to meet, they said.

Washington pulled out of last year's U.N. racism conference in
South Africa to protest attempts, in a draft declaration, to
single out close ally Israel as a racist state.

As approved by conference organizers over the weekend, the
draft for the Monterrey conference would "urge developed nations
that have not done so to make concrete efforts toward the target
of 0.7 percent of (gross national product) as (official
development assistance) to developing countries."

Rather than set a timetable, the declaration would "underline
the importance of undertaking to examine the means and time
frames for achieving the targets and goals."

It also would recognize that a substantial increase in
official development assistance was needed to meet U.N.
development goals and would urge poor as well as donor nations to
make more effective use of development assistance.

"This is not a legally binding document, but ... there is a
sense of urgency in these writings. There is a clear direction,"
said Ruth Jacoby of Sweden, the diplomat who co-chaired the
conference preparatory meetings with Pakistan envoy Shamshad
Ahmad.

"I don't think it is important for us now to discuss what
position was taken by which country. What is important is that we
have a consensus document," Ahmad told a news conference.