Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda called on Sunday for urgent measures to provide food security to poor countries amid runaway prices that have sparked riots around the world.
“We need short, middle and long term solutions to the crisis,” Fukuda said after holding talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on the first leg of a European tour focused on the global food crisis.
The prime minister said the international community must act together to tackle soaring prices and shortages and vowed to put it at the top of the agenda of the G8 summit in Japan next month.
“Food producing countries no longer have sufficient stocks and are therefore trying to export less. This has become the case with more and more countries in recent months,” he said.
“This has pushed up prices and countries who cannot cope with the additional cost, no longer have enough food. So we have to sit down as the international community and come up with short-term relief measures,” Fukuda said.
He said that in the longer term, richer countries must help their poor counterparts, particularly in Africa, to be in a position to produce more food and become self sufficient.
“We need to export seed and know-how to those countries who need it,” he said.
Both Fukuda and Merkel warned that the production of biofuels as an alternative energy source must not be allowed to interfere with crop cultivation and aggravate food shortages.
“We must make sure that biofuel production does not compete with crop cultivation, that it does not interfere with the need to produce food,” Merkel said.
Both leaders called for steps to increase oil production and supply stability as prices soar above US$130 per barrel.
“What is important is that more oil should be produced and we should invest in this. We need a stable supply,” Fukuda said, adding, however, that: “We cannot ignore the market and just decide something.”
Fukuda’s trip is part of Japan’s preparations to host the G8 summit of leading industrialized countries from July 7 to July 9 at Toyako, a lakeside resort on the northern island of Hokkaido.
He said on Sunday that another important focus of the G8 meeting would be to ensure that emerging nations like China and India sign up to measures to cap the production of greenhouse gases.
“We have to bring those two countries on board,” he said.
Merkel agreed and vowed to help him lobby the two vast nations that say signing up to fixed targets on slashing greenhouse gases will hinder growth and their fight against poverty.
Fukuda, facing slumping approval ratings, hopes to use the G8 summit to boost Japan’s diplomatic clout and highlight its efforts to help tackle global warming and food shortages in developing countries.
Japan has promised US$100 million in emergency food aid and pledged last week at a summit with African leaders to help the continent double production of rice within a decade.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS