Sun, Jun 09, 2002 page10

• US faces Africa's need for economic aid

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  Chatting With reporters on the last night of his trip to Africa last month, US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill suggested that he was returning home a changed man.

  Having spent the better part of two weeks getting an up-close look at intense poverty and its victims, O'Neill said no one could have been unaffected by the experience.

  "If you didn't learn something, you're a piece of wood or something," he said.

  Having started the trip convinced that a half-century of aid to the developing world had produced little in the way of results, O'Neill finished it saying there could no longer be any excuse for failure to address the basic needs of the world's poorest people, especially for clean water.

  "If we approached it in the same way we did the need to beat fascism in the Second World War, in two or three years' period of time, we could bring clean water to all of those people," O'Neill proclaimed.

  To which his traveling companion, the rock star and social activist Bono, replied: "I like that kind of talk."

  Bono also noted a need to ensure that development aid makes a measurable difference in the world's neediest populations.

  "We're going to lose millions of lives unless there's a significant jump in aid from the United States and Europe," Bono said, turning to O'Neill. "The only reason people won't be prepared to make that jump with us is actually the reason why this man is the right man for the job: They need to believe the money will get to the people, and I think he's the best insurance policy I've ever met that the money will be well spent."

  Their exchange partly reflected Bono's adeptness at turning ideological foes into allies by maneuvering them into endorsing aid on their own terms. But it also reflected the emergence of a clear middle ground in the old left-right debate over whether aid is a moral commitment to be pursued at any cost or a giant and wasteful welfare program that breeds dependency.

  The question now is whether the sense of purpose brought home by O'Neill can be translated into a sustained commitment by the US to making aid work and to providing enough of it to address health and education needs, the basic preconditions for economic development.

  In a clear challenge to O'Neill to make good on his good intentions, James Wolfensohn, the president of the World Bank, said last week that the leaders of the seven largest industrial nations should pledge that half of all new aid be directed to Africa and that they should get on with the job of delivering it.

  "There is nothing intractable about Africa's problems unless we choose to make them so," Wolfensohn said in a speech.

  In a speech of his own the next day, O'Neill replied: "Development is complicated. I know that. I don't underestimate the challenge. I just don't think we should accept complexity as an excuse for delay."

  There are plenty of impediments to creating a national focus on Africa. The US is in the midst of a war on terrorism that not only has first dibs on the national budget but is also shaping nearly all foreign policy decisions based on who's with us and who's against us. This is a congressional election year, and members of both parties are concentrating on issues closer to home. O'Neill himself is sure to be swamped by other priorities.

  But there are some reasons to think O'Neill might get somewhere. The administration has already put an additional US$5 billion a year on the table for helping poor nations, and O'Neill is drawing up the criteria for how it will be distributed.

  With the US again cast in the role of the Great Satan in parts of the world, a concerted effort to battle global poverty could soften others' views of America. A new poverty-fighting compact requiring measurable results would allow President Bush a new opportunity to prove to his critics that compassionate conservatism is more than an empty phrase obscuring his belief in market forces as the best solution to all problems. Among those on the Africa trip was someone who did as much as anyone else to cast Bush as a compassionate conservative in the 2000 presidential campaign -- Mark McKinnon, his media and advertising consultant.

  Six years ago, Democrats and Republicans haltingly agreed on a new approach to welfare as a way to deal with poverty at home. The next few months could determine whether they will be able to do the same for poverty in the rest of the world.
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