Pubdate: Sat, 23 Mar 2002
Source: New York Times (NY)
Section: International
Copyright: 2002 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Elisabeth Bumiller
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?172 (Peruvian Aircraft Shooting)

BUSH, IN MONTERREY, SPEAKS OF CONDITIONAL GLOBAL AID

MONTERREY, Mexico, March 22 -- President Bush called today for a "new 
compact" for global development by insisting that rich nations give foreign 
aid to poor nations only if poor nations undertake a broad range of 
political, legal and economic reforms.

"Pouring money into a failed status quo does little to help the poor, and 
can actually delay the progress of reform," Mr. Bush told the presidents 
and prime ministers of 50 nations gathered here for a conference on global 
aid to the developing world. "We must accept a higher, more difficult, more 
promising call."

Mr. Bush spoke on the closing day of the conference, when 171 nations 
signed the "Monterrey Consensus," an accord committing them to the goals of 
doubling development aid to the poor and halving world poverty by 2015.

Tonight, in a wide-ranging news conference, the president said no decision 
had been made on whether to begin a new round of drug interdiction flights 
over Peru. The flights, in which Peruvian fighter planes force down or 
shoot down suspected drug flights, were suspended last year when a plane 
carrying American missionaries was mistakenly shot down.

"We're analyzing not only what took place in the past, but the most 
effective way help Peru fight narcotics," he said. Mr. Bush will travel to 
Peru on Saturday.

The president also tried to lay to rest talk that Fidel Castro's abrupt 
departure from the conference on Thursday was the result of pressure from 
the United States.

Mr. Bush said there was "no pressure on anybody. Fidel Castro can do what 
he wants to do."

In his talk today, the president reiterated a promise of a 50 percent 
increase in American foreign aid over three years, and added that some 
money might be available as early as this year -- a counter to complaints 
from development agencies that the United States was moving too slowly in 
its new foreign aid commitments.

Mr. Bush's pledge meant that the total American foreign aid budget, if 
approved by Congress, would be $15 billion by 2006. The current American 
foreign aid budget is $10 billion.

Although Mr. Bush's pledge of aid fell short of the goals of the 
conference, the American commitment -- along with a promise of $4 billion 
more per year from the European Union -- was considered the most important 
developments of Monterrey, and proved, development experts said, that poor 
nations could exert powerful pressure on the richest nation in the world, 
particularly when the United States was asking many nations for help in the 
fight against terrorism. Mr. Bush's pledge of aid, which he first announced 
in a speech last week in Washington, was considered an abrupt change in 
Bush administration policy.

"It's a shift in political attitude that is very important," said Jorge G. 
Castaneda, Mexico's foreign minister. Mr. Bush, Mr. Castaneda added, 
clearly did not want to come to Monterrey "without anything to propose, 
without anything to put on the table."

Mr. Bush said that he would "jump start" his new aid program to make some 
funding available to nations that meet American standards of reform within 
the next year. Last week, development agencies had criticized him for 
delaying the start of the aid increase until 2004.

But Congress must first approve that money, and the Bush administration 
must also develop the specific standards for economic, political and legal 
reform, making it unclear how much new money will actually flow from the 
United States to poor nations this year. Mr. Bush has given the task of 
developing those standards to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and 
Secretary of the Treasury Paul H. O'Neill, who this week in Monterrey 
expressed considerable skepticism about foreign aid.

"If we are going to have real economic development in the world, most of 
that will come from capital coming into those countries to create jobs," 
Mr. O'Neill said. "We are not going to do it with welfare."

Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, called Mr. Bush's move to speed 
up the aid an "indication by the president to do a little more, a little 
earlier." Mr. Fleischer said that the White House had no specific number in 
mind, but that it might be "a couple hundred million." Adding additional 
aid this year would not be part of the president's proposal for a 50 
percent increase, he said.

Under that proposal, the foreign aid budget would grow by $1.7 billion in 
2004, by $3.3 billion in 2005 and by $5 billion in 2006. Taken together, 
that would amount to a $10 billion increase in the foreign aid budget over 
three years. But Mr. Bush, sounding a similar but more diplomatic call than 
his treasury secretary, said that trade and foreign investment were far 
more important to the economic health of a poor nation than any level of 
foreign aid.

"All of us here must focus on real benefits to the poor, instead of 
debating arbitrary levels of inputs from the rich," Mr. Bush said in his 
speech at the Monterrey International Business Center. He added that "to be 
serious about fighting poverty, we must be serious about expanding trade."

Mr. Bush, as he has before, linked development aid to the fight against 
terrorism and also cast it in terms of religious and moral obligations.

"We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror," Mr. Bush 
said. "We fight against poverty because opportunity is a fundamental right 
to human dignity. We fight against poverty because faith requires it and 
conscience demands it."
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager