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G8 meets emerging nations
06/04/2008 18:42 - (SA)
Tokyo - Ministers from the richest nations and from nations with the fastest-growing economies continued talks on Sunday on developing specific measures to reduce poverty in Africa and other areas under a 2000 UN agreement.
Sunday was the second day of meetings between development ministers from the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations and the emerging donor nations - Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, South Korea and South Africa.
G8 nations were to issue a summary later on Sunday on how to bolster their efforts in foreign development aid.
Late on Saturday, the ministers agreed on "increasing the credibility and transparency of aid policy," officials said.
Human rights pressure on China
Officials have privately admitted that G8 countries hope to coax China and other emerging donors to place greater emphasis on human rights when awarding aid.
China recently made major diplomatic and economic inroads, mostly into resource-rich nations in Africa and Latin America, by giving aid without imposing any conditions.
This strategy contrasted with that of the United States, European Union and Japan as well as the World Bank and the IMF, which usually used aid as leverage to improve human rights and implement other reforms in recipient nations.
Millennium Development Goals
The ministers have pledged in Tokyo to further work to achieve the Millennium Development Goals: halving extreme poverty, halting the spread of HIV/Aids and providing primary education in poor countries, by the target year of 2015.
"The ministers discussed development and Africa as one topic," said a Japanese foreign ministry official.
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