British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was aiming to build new international alliances for a fight against global poverty yesterday, using a UN speech to press nations, businesses and individuals to back ambitious plans to revive a stalled global development plan.
His call for a push on aid and diplomacy followed a two-day summit with US President George W. Bush, where the new British chief pledged support for military action in Iraq and Afghanistan and tough measures to tackle terrorism.
British officials have insisted Brown's foreign policy will be marked by his desire to mix the use of force and sanctions with backing for development and economic aid programs. Brown has called it a balance of ``hard power and soft power.''
PHOTO: AP
His attempts to lead the international community in efforts to break an impasse on stalled world trade negotiations and on halting violence in Sudan's Darfur region are read by some as a bid to atone for predecessor Tony Blair's unpopular backing for the US-led invasion of Iraq.
Officials said Brown hopes to harness the popular global support won by campaigns such as Make Poverty History and Live Earth to support his development drive.
In a speech to the UN yesterday, Brown planned to press an audience of business leaders, non-governmental organizations and international delegates over failures in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.
A report card published earlier this month showed that progress toward achieving the benchmarks on reducing global poverty and increasing access to childcare and education, agreed to at a UN summit in 2000, was poor, Brown's aides said.
Brown has held talks with U2 singer and anti-poverty campaigner Bono about the goals and plans to enlist businesses, including Google and Wal-Mart, to help governments achieve the development goals, British officials said.
Speaking to reporters at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel, Brown said he would also demand backing for efforts to authorize a 26,000-strong combined UN-African peacekeeping force for Darfur.
The leader's Downing Street office said Brown hoped initial troops could be deployed by October in an attempt to halt the fighting between ethnic African rebels and the pro-government janjaweed Arab militia in the western Sudanese region.
US ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, said on Monday that Security Council members hoped to finalize a resolution within 24 hours.
Former president Bill Clinton also held brief discussions with the British leader at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on Monday evening about his UN speech and work to helping developing nations, Brown told reporters.
Brown was due to appear on NBC television's Today show on Tuesday morning and meet with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Reginald Dale, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the British leader's decision to meet Bush and Ban on the same visit had caused some disquiet.
"They are angered that his visit is a twofer," Dale said. "Some Republicans believe Brown has deliberately gone to the UN to attempt to draw the sting out of meeting Bush for his domestic audience."
Talks on Sunday and on Monday at Bush's Camp David retreat in Maryland saw the British and US leaders pledge harmony over Iraq.
"There's no doubt in my mind he understands the stakes of the struggle," Bush said, heaping praise on Blair's successor.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS