San Diego Union Tribune

July 3, 2005

Poverty to be focus of G-8 summit; Bush in challenging role

By Finlay Lewis
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON – With voters on two continents voicing doubts about their leaders' policies, President Bush heads to Scotland this week for an economic summit to tackle problems ranging from African poverty to Iran's nuclear ambitions to ominous signs of a changing global climate.

Playing host, British Prime Minister Tony Blair will open the annual Group of 8 meeting Wednesday amid the splendor of Gleneagles, a stunning golf resort a world apart from the grinding poverty of sub-Saharan Africa that Blair has placed at the center of the agenda.

Allies in the war on terror, Bush and Blair have differed over strategies for invigorating Africa. Bush recently yielded to the prime minister, however, in agreeing to a plan that would wipe out $40 billion in debts owed by 18 of the world's most impoverished nations – including 14 in Africa – to global lenders.

The deal will be ratified by the other six leaders at the meeting of the eight major industrialized countries. But it represents only a modest step toward meeting Blair's goal of doubling annual foreign aid to Africa to $25 billion, and then doubling it again to $50 billion by 2015.

The president offered his critics a pleasant surprise last week by unveiling an anti-malaria initiative and other steps that he said would increase U.S. spending in Africa. But the fine print showed the plan falling about $4 billion short if the United States is to cover its share in meeting Blair's $25 billion target.

Bush will be the odd man out on that goal as well as another key item on the Blair agenda, which calls for concerted international action to deal with global warming.

"The reality on aid to Africa and on climate change is that whatever form of words the leaders find to mask their disagreement, the reality is, they disagree," observed Ivo Daalder, a foreign policy expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. "The U.S. stands isolated on these issues."

On his way to Scotland, Bush will stop in Denmark on Tuesday to thank the Danes for their support in the war on terror and the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Danes have nearly 600 troops serving with the British in southern Iraq.

The president will then travel to Gleneagles to join Blair and the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia.

Built in 1924 in the style of a French chateau, the resort sits amid the rolling hills of Perthshire in northern Scotland. Upon arrival, the leaders are scheduled to attend a dinner with Queen Elizabeth before opening the summit the following day.

It will be the first G-8 gathering since the Iranian voters handed the presidency to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a conservative hard-liner who has vowed to move ahead with a controversial nuclear development program. The Bush administration is supporting a diplomatic effort by Britain, France and Germany to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions.

The summit also comes on the heels of political developments that have dealt a severe blow to a long-standing goal of forging a more cohesive and larger European Union.

As a result, Blair has been squabbling with French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder over EU issues at a time when all three leaders find themselves politically weakened at home.

Evidence of European disarray may pose special problems for Bush, who is beset by his own declining approval ratings. He launched his second term this year by traveling to Europe as part of a package of moves designed to strengthen trans-Atlantic ties strained by the Iraq war and his image as a go-it-alone leader.

Anxious to secure greater help from the Europeans for Iraq's reconstruction, Bush may find himself playing the unfamiliar role of statesman at the summit.

"Bush has got to be Mr. Nice Guy," said Simon Serfaty, a European expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "This is not just a personal matter for him. It is obviously a policy matter. ... The EU has a potential and capabilities in excess of any of its individual members. He has got to be the U.S. statesman, the American statesman."

In that context, Bush's refusal to endorse Blair's more expansive program for African aid may matter less than the fact that he reversed his initial opposition to debt write-off, which will free up about $1 billion a year for the affected African states.

Bush coupled that move by pledging $674 million in famine assistance to the Horn of Africa.

He can also point to a $15 billion AIDS/HIV relief plan launched three years ago. According to the State Department, about 230,000 men, women and children in sub-Saharan Africa have received anti retroviral treatment. The five-year goal is to provide assistance in more than 100 countries.

Bush says U.S. development aid to Africa has tripled since he took office five years ago. Many experts dispute that figure, with a study by Susan Rice, an Africa expert at Brookings, calculating that development assistance has increased only 33 percent from the final year of President Bill Clinton's term of office until last year.

Bush's announcement last week that he would seek $1.2 billion over five years to fight malaria in Africa along with $400 million to improve education on the continent and $55 million to fight abuse of women was greeted warmly by many who had previously been wary of his approach to fighting global poverty.

The package, many critics conceded, was a step in the right direction, and Blair's office issued a statement saying the pledge "creates real momentum for a successful outcome at Gleneagles."

At the same time, Bush is expected to hold fast at the summit to his insistence that aid to poor nations should be linked to their adoption of policies that combat corruption, advance democracy, encourage free markets and fight illiteracy and disease.

On climate change, however, there is no disguising the ideological chasm that divided Bush from much of the rest of the developed world five years ago when he rejected the Kyoto Treaty, which called for strong and costly steps to curb emissions of greenhouse gases.

In an interview last week with The Times of London, Bush acknowledged, "I fully recognize that my decision in Kyoto was unpopular." He was blunter in an interview with Danish television, saying that the treaty would have "wrecked" the U.S. economy.

Blair, who has acknowledged that there is no longer any point in trying to bridge disagreements over Kyoto, has come under fire at home for having received few tangible concessions from Bush in return for Britain's staunch support of the unpopular U.S.-led operation in Iraq.

The president was pressed on this point in the London newspaper interview.

"What doesn't happen in our relationship is we sit down here and calculate how best we can help each other personally," Bush said.

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