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.