G-8 to Focus on Terrorism, Africa

June 24, 2002
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer

President Bush and colleagues in the rich-country club will focus on terrorism in all its aspects at this year's economic summit — from improving intelligence cooperation to devoting more effort to address a prime breeding ground for terrorists, abject poverty.

In fact even before the Sept. 11 attacks, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, this year's host, had put Africa at the top of this year's Group of Eight agenda, hoping to prod the G-8 into endorsing a major new aid program for the world's poorest continent.

But even before the two days of discussions get under way Wednesday at Kananaskis, Alberta, a remote resort in the Canadian Rockies, critics are contending that the programs the G-8 will put forward fall far short of what of is needed.

In a report released Monday, ActionAid, a global aid group, said the world is far behind meeting the United Nations' goal of cutting global poverty in half by 2015. It urged the G-8 to double aid over the next three years.

"Unless they radically change their approach, 2015 will come and go and 66 million children will have died needlessly because of poverty," said Matthew Lockwood, the report's author.

Bush and the leaders of the other G-8 countries — Russia, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada — have been devoting the days leading up to the summit announcing various initiatives for Africa dealing with education and HIV-AIDS. Activists say the aid increases fall far short of what is needed.

However, Mark Malloch-Brown, administrator of the U.N. agency spearheading the poverty reduction drive, said he believed the Sept. 11 attacks sparked a major new commitment to deal with the root causes of poverty and despair.

"In the 1990s, aid to Africa dropped by one-third. Now we are seeing that dramatically turn around," he said.

As always at these summits — this will be the 28th — political hot spots will intrude in the economic discussions.

U.S. allies are coming with plenty of questions about what Bush might have in mind in terms of expanding the war on terrorism to Iraq and other countries.

The president, in a commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy on June 1, said the United States will strike pre-emptively against suspected terrorists or the states that support them if necessary to deter attacks on Americans.

The remarks raised new misgivings about what many allies see as a troubling U.S. tendency toward unilateral action.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said he did not expect Bush to apply pressure for G-8 backing for an imminent expansion of the campaign. "Demands are not on the agenda in Canada," he said.

Security will be extraordinarily tight for the discussions, with the tiny mountain resort accessible only by a two-lane road. That will help authorities make sure there will not be a repeat of last year's violent street clashes in Genoa, Italy, in which one protester was killed by police and hundreds were injured.

The G-8 leaders will be joined in their discussions by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the leaders of five African countries, including South African President Thabo Mbeki.

Mbeki is seeking support for his "New Partnership for African Development," which some see as the modern-day equivalent of the U.S. Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II. The G-8 program would provide billions of dollars of aid to African countries that pledge to eliminate government corruption and pursue free-market economic reforms.

However, a report Monday by a group of prominent former diplomats from G-8 countries, including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, said the summit needs to raise tough questions about the commitment of African nations to political reform.

"The absence of effective African pressures for sound practices around the recent election in Zimbabwe raises serious doubts about the prospects for both good governance and effective peer pressure on the continent," the Group of Eight Preparatory Conference said.

C. Fred Bergsten, head of the private Institute for International Economics in Washington and a co-chairman of the group, said officials also were concerned about rising trade tensions, including the Bush administration's decision to impose steep tariffs on imported steel.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is hoping to win backing at the summit for a program in which the United States will provide $10 billion over the next 10 years, to be matched by other wealthy countries, to help Russia decommission its nuclear stockpile.

On the Net: Canadian government's summit site: http://www.g8.gc.ca/

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