UK's Brown to urge action to reach UN poverty goals
31 Jul 2007 06:11:20 GMT Source: Reuters
By Adrian Croft NEW YORK, July 31 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will call for action on Tuesday to put the world back on track to meet U.N. goals to slash extreme poverty by 2015. A day after his first talks with U.S. President George W. Bush, the new British leader will give a speech at the United Nations to demonstrate his belief in international cooperation and his determination to improve the lot of the world's poor. A report released this month on progress so far found most of the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals were far from being met. "Gordon Brown is going to focus on what we need to do to achieve these goals, to get back on track," a British government source said about Brown's speech on Tuesday which he will deliver after meeting U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Brown will call for companies and charities to get involved in the drive to meet the Millennium Development Goals, adopted at a U.N. summit in 2000. The goals include halving the number of people living on less than $1 a day by 2015, achieving universal primary education, reducing child and maternal mortality, stopping the spread of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and halving the number of people without access to clean water and sanitation. Ban said this month the world would struggle to meet the U.N. goals, but said it could be done if rich countries boosted their international aid budgets. As Britain's long-serving finance minister before succeeding Tony Blair as prime minister in June, Brown has long been an advocate for reducing poor countries' debt burden and fighting poverty and disease in the developing world. IRAQ While Brown is eager to talk about the developing world, analysts said he appeared less keen to discuss Iraq on Monday at the news conference following his meeting with Bush. Growing opposition to the war in Britain undermined Blair's popularity and has fuelled speculation that Brown could pull out British troops from Iraq. Brown gave no promises on how long Britain would keep its 5,000 troops in Iraq. Britain has already handed over security control to Iraqi forces in three of the provinces it was responsible for and Brown said it intends to do the same in the fourth province, Basra, but the decision would be based on military advice. After a spate of reports that the new British leader would seek to distance himself from Bush, both men were keen to show they could strike up a strong bond at their Camp David meeting. Bush forged close ties with Blair, his most important ally during the Iraq war. By contrast, Brown, the son of a Scottish preacher, is a serious intellectual keen to avoid the tag of "Bush's poodle" that weakened Blair in Britain. Bush heaped praise on Brown, saying he was "not the dour Scotsman" portrayed in the media, but rather "he's actually the humorous Scotsman." On Iran, the two agreed on the need to pursue tougher sanctions against the country over its nuclear program. Brown later stopped by the U.S. Capitol and told Democratic and Republican leaders of Congress that U.S.-British relations were "not only strong, but strengthening." Former U.S. President Bill Clinton later met Brown at his New York hotel. (Additional reporting by Caren Bohan, Susan Cornwell and Evelyn Leopold)
