WASHINGTON, 9 June 2005 — US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have challenged the so-called “Downing Street memo,” which said intelligence was manipulated in 2002 to justify the war in Iraq. Both men also said they were committed to negotiating a peace deal that would create a Palestinian state.
During Tuesday’s press conference at the White House, the two allies defended their role in the war on Iraq, agreed to increase financial assistance to developing African nations suffering from famine, AIDS, and air pollution. But the two leaders disagreed over how much money rich nations should provide poor African nations and how they should ease global warning.
Blair failed to persuade Bush to agree to doubling aid to Africa. To deflect the issue, the White House leaked word of Bush’s plan to announce increased aid to Africa the night before Blair’s arrival “as a way to divert attention away from the president’s refusal to back Blair’s more ambitious plan to dramatically increase global financial assistance to Africa,” noted yesterday’s Washington Post.
Analysts said Bush’s decision means Africa can expect compassion but little action when G-8 finance ministers meet this week, as no real commitments on slashing debt, doubling aid or making trade concessions will be on the table.
“If current trends continue over the next decade ... there will be (an estimated) three million more child deaths in 2015 than there would be if the (UN) millennium target were met. By 2015 sub-Saharan Africa will account for two in every three child deaths in the world. ... Currently, poverty-related diseases claim the lives of 500 African children each hour — and the numbers are going up,” the director of the United Nations Human Development Report Office, Kevin Watkins, wrote in the International Herald Tribune.
The ministers from the Group of Seven industrialized nations and Russia meet in London tomorrow and Saturday to prepare for a summit of their leaders in Gleneagles, Scotland next month.
In what is being called “Blair’s ‘Marshall Plan’ for Africa,” Britain’s prime minister wants to use International Monetary Fund (IMF) gold reserves to pay for writing off Africa’s debts and creating an International Finance Facility (IFF) to raise aid money now by issuing bonds against future development budgets.
Bush’s key concession during his meeting with Blair at the White House was that the write-off of the debts, held by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, would not be carried by either body.
But Bush made it clear the US would not support Blair’s so-called Marshall Plan for Africa, which involves a doubling of aid at a cost of $25 billion, of which the US would need to contribute about $6 billion.
Blair’s spokesman said yesterday the debt cancellation could benefit around 25 of the poorest countries. Sub-Saharan Africa owes around $70 billion to international organizations.
Blair said the rest of the G-8 — France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada and Russia — now must be persuaded to clinch a deal. But Paris, Tokyo and Berlin have their own debt relief proposal that would help only five countries.
Bush also offered little encouragement for Blair’s hopes of mounting a joint international fight against global warming.
“Climate change is, in my view, long term, the single biggest issue that we face,” Blair told the House of Commons yesterday after returning from talks with Bush.
“The brutal truth is, without America in a process of dialogue and action in the international community, we are not going to make progress on it.”
