Annan in UK on two day visit
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown met the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, last night to discuss ways to eradicate poverty in the third world.
At the start of his two-day trip to Britain to discuss next year’s summit at the General Assembly, Mr Annan said many of the UN’s eight Millennium Development Goals were “far from being met.”
These include improvements in literacy and the fight against gender discrimination.
But, Mr Annan urged countries to collaborate on the key task to halve chronic poverty by 2015.
Speaking on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, Mr Annan said the eight “feasible” and “affordable” goals required “a quantum leap” in aid, debt relief and trade concessions on the part of developed countries.
The British government has said it will focus on the eight goals when it assumes the presidencies of the EU and the G8 in 2005.
“I will be supporting the G7 donors considering seriously the Chancellor’s proposal for an International Finance Facility that would be capable of doubling aid flows to the developing world up to $100bn a year,” Mr Annan said.
With this in mind, Mr Annan urged the Blair administration to work with the EU to find a “political breakthrough and the additional resources needed to achieve those goals.”
Speaking after the meeting last night, Mr Brown said: “The international movement for debt relief and additional resources for the millennium development goals is gaining momentum in the run up to 2005, a year that will be crucial in testing our resolve to fulfil our promises to the poorest of the world.”
Mr Brown has called on the International Monetary Fund to re-value more of its gold reserves to free up funds to finance and write off third-world debt.
The Department of International Development is behind plans to offer debt relief to more than 30 countries to enable them to manage debts owed to the World Bank and African Development Bank.
With the UK to assume the rotating presidency of the EU and the G8 next year, Mr Brown is keen to lead the debt relief by example in the hope of winning more donations for world development initiatives.
Mr Brown has said unsustainable debt is a “burden” on the present, depriving millions of a future and repeating “the cycle of poverty, illiteracy and disease.”
Mr Annan is expected to meet with Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw today.
