When leaders of the G-8 nations meet in two week’s time in Scotland, discussions will include the Middle East peace process, Iraq, Iran and the situation in Afghanistan — quite a large Middle Eastern agenda to digest, given that the summit will also discuss climate change and proposals to cancel the debt of Africa’s poorest countries. There is going to be a lot of argument, a lot of posturing, a lot of hot air but, apart from one exception, probably not a lot of progress on any of these issues. President Bush is unmovable on the environment; so no progress there. And on all the Middle East issues, there will be talk, even good will, but nothing that actually makes for any breakthrough. The debt issue is the exception. It is a done deal. President Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, the summit’s host, will ask the summit to write off the debt of 32 of the world’s poorest count, and none of the other six is going to say no. It would be political suicide. Not even French President Jacques Chirac, who would love to ruin Tony’s show, will do so. While the summit is in progress, the drum for international debt relief and against poverty will be beaten as never before. The Bush and Blair initiative is laudable; debt relief is worth billions of dollars. It will make a difference.

But from another corner of the world comes a different idea. Malaysian Premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has called for Muslim countries to increase bilateral trade as a means of increasing mutual prosperity. The trade versus aid argument is not new but when put in stark black-and-white terms, there is a valid point to make. Debt relief — just another form of aid — is invaluable, but fairer trade is even more invaluable. For struggling Third World economies, particularly those wholly dependent on exports of a particular cash crop or a particular mineral, where the vagaries of the international market can mean heady sales one year and a plunging prices the next, improved trade could pump in between 20 to 30 times the amount that debt relief would bring. Debt relief can mean that a government has more money to build schools, hospitals and infrastructural; improved trade means greater prosperity for all. Badawi’s call to Muslim self help makes economic sense; around 20 percent of the world’s population are Muslim, yet Muslim countries account for just 5 percent of global income. Most of the world’s poorest nations are Muslim. Yet so are some of the world’s richest and some of the world’s biggest consumers. A “Buy Muslim” policy would help; it could go some way to rebalancing the figure for inter-Muslim trade — just 10 percent of the Muslim world’s total trade.

But such a policy needs more than willing purchasers. It needs investment in new industries, in education, in infrastructure — and, to start with, it needs a degree of protectionism. There is no way developing economies can establish themselves as equals of rich nations in today’s global free market. They are swamped before they can stand on their own feet — not just by the multinationals, but also by the massive subsidies the EU and the US provide to their farmers. Cutting them would be good not just for the sake of better budgetary policy in the EU and the US, but also as a means to helping the world’s poorest nations. But that is another story.