Reuters AlertNet Lite - US' Rice urges world not to renege on aid to poor

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US' Rice urges world not to renege on aid to poor

21 Oct 2008 15:49:09 GMT
Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (Reuters) - The United States and other countries must maintain their commitment to help the world's poor despite strains posed by the global financial crisis, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Tuesday.

"Reneging on our commitments to the world's poor cannot be an austerity measure," Rice said at a White House sponsored summit on international development aid.

She said that when times are hard, it was to be expected that states would focus on protecting their own interests.

"But what we cannot do, what we must not do, is to allow our generosity and concern for others to fall victims to today's crisis," she told the representatives of private aid groups, beneficiary countries and U.S. government officials.

Rice said she hoped whoever replaces President George W. Bush in January, either Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama, would sustain the U.S. aid commitment.

Bush said over the weekend that he would host the first in a series of global financial crisis summits as the world grapples with the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Since the Bush administration came to office in 2001, the United States had doubled development assistance to Latin America, quadrupled it to Africa and tripled it world wide, Rice said.

It also made over $7.5 billion in grants to developing countries through its Millennium Challenge Corporation program.

Rice also called on Tuesday for an effort to revive the long-running Doha round of world trade talks.

The Doha talks collapsed in July, and negotiations in September failed to bridge differences on the disagreement between India and the United States over safeguards in farm trade.

But Rice said successfully completing it would send a powerful signal that the world's response to the crisis would be different than during the the 1930s, when the protectionist response of many countries, including the United States, deepened the crisis.

"We must seize this moment as an opportunity to revive and conclude the Doha round for the expansion of an open and global trading system, because that is the best way to create prosperity and to enable more people to share in it," she said. (Editing by Jackie Frank)

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