Bush backs African 'Marshall Plan'

The United States is willing to look for ways to fund a "Marshall Plan" for Africa even if it opposes Britain's plan for a new lending facility, South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday.

Mbeki, fresh from meeting US President George Bush in Washington this week, told the World Economic Forum Africa summit in Cape Town the US leader was willing to help Africa, and Bush hoped commitments would be made at the G8 summit.

"The US says, we don't agree on the IFF (British-proposed International Financial Facility), but what we agree to is to generate funds using whatever mechanisms at its disposal," Mbeki told African business and political leaders at the close of their three-day summit.

"What President Bush has said is, give me the target (funding), but leave to me the matter of what method I will use to produce this outcome... He (Bush) wasn't talking about it being too much money," Mbeki said.

Mbeki said he did not expect resistance to the idea to fund the recovery of Africa, close to half of whose nearly 700 million sub-Saharan population live on less than US$1 a day, but the debate was likely to centre around ways to pay for the effort.

The plan devised by British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Africa Commission seeks an extra US$25 billion a year in aid until 2010 to help end widespread poverty and disease in Africa.

A central plank of the plan - the IFF, which would borrow against future aid pledges - has drawn US opposition.

The Africa summit has said it hopes to use Blair's plan to lobby the G8 group of industrialized states to give more aid to Africa at the G8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland next month.

Africa would place funding for peace and security on the Gleneagles agenda, Mbeki said.

Blair has staked his reputation on helping the continent during Britain's presidency of the G8 and the European Union this year, but his proposals have been dogged by discord among G8 nations on debt reduction and aid spending.

Mbeki said a plan to impose an international tax on jet fuel -- an idea floated by French President Jacques Chirac -- was yet another example that the G8 was keen to help Africa.

"Chirac is talking about taxes on jet fuel, the US is talking of using its budget processes. I don't expect there will be conflict at Gleneagles over the need to help Africa," he said.

Mbeki backed Blair's blueprint, saying it responded to pledges already made by the G8 to Africa's New Partnership For Africa's Development (NEPAD), a home-grown rescue plan, in 2002.

He said NEPAD's peer review mechanism -- where evaluators assess a country's governance record in the hope that positive ratings could lure foreign lending and investment -- would help guarantee that aid money is not misused.

The first reports under the voluntary scrutiny process, on Ghana and Rwanda, were expected to be ready this month, he said.

Source: China Daily