Poverty Conference Chastises Rich

Led by host President Vicente Fox, leaders meeting here Thursday at a U.N. conference on poverty condemned the world’s richest countries for not doing enough to ease the plight of the poor.

The world’s efforts to confront the problem of development and poverty have been “poor, late and disheartening,” Fox said, setting the tone for a round of morning speeches at the United Nations Conference on Financing for Development.

The head of the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean said the legacy of 15 years of open markets in the hemisphere has been “large-scale frustration” instead of the jobs and higher living standards that were promised.

“The whole issue of development has to be put on the table again,” economist Jose Antonio Ocampo, the commission’s executive secretary, said in an interview.

So strong is the consensus that aid programs must be increased, World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn said, the issue is no longer one of vision but one of implementation--how to deliver any expanded assistance to the countries that need them.

The Bush administration has proposed adding $5 billion to its annual aid to poor nations by 2006, and the European Union hopes to increase its pledges by $7 billion annually over that period.

Aid has become a popular cause as countries have realized that freer trade and greater foreign investment alone are not improving the lot of impoverished nations, Ocampo said.

Despite a flood of direct foreign investment over the last decade totaling $400 billion, economic growth in Latin America since 1998 has averaged only 1.5% a year, far short of the 4% that economists say is the minimum necessary to fight poverty.

Although applauded for its proposed aid increase, the Bush administration has been stung by criticism that it still is not doing enough. The EU’s aid commitment represents 0.39% of its economic output, about three times the U.S. commitment when measured as a fraction of the economy.

President Bush arrived in Monterrey on Thursday afternoon and huddled with Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien in a meeting of North American Free Trade Agreement partners. Bush is to address the full forum today.

In his speech here Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said an additional $50 billion in annual aid is needed to address problems of health care and education, or double the amount now given to poor nations.

Before cutting short his visit and returning home Thursday, creating a minor stir among his Mexican hosts, Cuban President Fidel Castro condemned the world economy as a “giant casino” in which the losers are the poor.

“It has reached such extremes that the combined wealth of the world’s three richest people equal the economic output of the 48 poorest countries,” Castro said.

Life expectancy in wealthy nations is 30 years longer than in sub-Saharan Africa, Castro added.

Asked to account for the growing consensus among rich nations that their aid to poor countries should increase, U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill said: “This is a process that was begun two years ago. . . . There is a consensus that the world needs to do more about raising living standards of poor people everywhere.”

The United States will apply benchmarks to measure the effectiveness of its aid, O’Neill said.

“This is about setting [conditions] that most countries are going to want to meet,” O’Neill said. “Who wants to sign up to be in the left-behinds?”