G8 SUMMIT: Charities and development groups have criticised the G8 leaders for not achieving enough to help developing nations. Oxfam's policy director, Mr Justin Forsyth, said no commitments were given.
"I've been to a few of these summits in the past and this is by far the worst in terms of outcome. We were told that there would be a deal on trade, particularly to cut agricultural subsidies in Europe and America. We also expected a step forward on the whole issue of access to medicines for things like AIDS and we expected quite a lot of new debt cancellation.
"On all of these issues," Mr Forsyth continued, "we have really had no progress. I think Africa has been caught in the crossfire between America and France and that is completely unacceptable."
Medecins Sans Frontières criticised what it called the deliberate sacrifice of solutions to increase access to essential medicines in favour of G8 political and commercial interests.
"Just to get a pat on the back from Bush," Mr Jean-Herve Bradol, president of MSF in France said, "Chirac has sacrificed the right for millions of people to have access to medicines they need to survive.
"He abandoned his widely publicised commitment to improving access to life-saving medicines and the rest of the G8 are merrily going along for the ride," Mr Bradol added.
A joint statement of African NGOs and trade unions said: "The outcome of the 2003 G8 summit reveals that the political will of the eight most powerful nations to meet their obligations to Africa has simply dried up."
Bob Geldof said the G8 summit in Evian had failed because the world's leading nations were too busy playing politics over Iraq.
"I'm unhappy with the outcome," said Geldof, who in 1985 staged the world's biggest rock concert to help Africa's starving and who had been urging the G8 nations to offer more help to the developing world.
"I don't want to be smart after the event but I thought there would be a lot of game-playing, post-Iraq," he told reporters at London's Heathrow airport after returning from a trip to famine-threatened Ethiopia. "I think it was characterised by that."
There was a commitment to fighting diseases such as AIDS and polio but no apparent new direct aid for poverty or debt relief for Africa.
A famine scheme disappointed activists by failing to mention the damaging effect of European and US farm subsidies on Africa's farm-based economies.
Leaders of developing nations were disappointed there was no progress on tearing down trade barriers which made their goods uncompetitive on world markets.
"From our point of view, the things that we were heading up were debt and trade and there was absolutely zero on that," Geldof said. "In fact there wasn't even any agreed language on trade. They've put that off to the IMF and World Bank which is basically parking it."
Geldof said he had spoken to the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, from Ethiopia during the summit and praised him for raising the question of food aid for the east African nation.
Aid agencies estimate 14 million Ethiopians are at risk of starvation after the worst drought in nearly two decades. HIV/AIDS has made the country's plight even worse. - (PA, Guardian service)
- Industrialised countries will increase their emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming by 10 per cent this decade, a UN report said yesterday.
The predicted rise comes despite international efforts to tackle greenhouse gas emissions and follows the near stabilisation of emissions in the 1990s.
"These findings clearly demonstrate that stronger and more creative policies will be needed," said Mr Joke Waller-Hunt, executive secretary of the United Nations climate change convention. - (Reuters)