Gordon Brown urges renewed efforts on reducing global poverty

UNITED NATIONS – British Prime Minister Gordon Brown moved to build new international alliances for a fight against global poverty Tuesday, using a United Nations speech to press nations, businesses and individuals to back ambitious plans to revive a stalled global development plan.

His call for a push on aid and diplomacy followed a two-day summit with US President George W Bush, where the new British chief pledged support for military action in Iraq and Afghanistan and tough measures to tackle terrorism. British officials have insisted Brown’s foreign policy will be marked by his desire to mix the use of force and sanctions with backing for development and economic aid programmes.Brown has called it a balance of ‘hard power and soft power’.His attempts to lead the international community in efforts to break an impasse on stalled world trade negotiations and on halting violence in Sudan’s Darfur region are read by some as a bid to atone for predecessor Tony Blair’s unpopular backing for the US-led invasion of Iraq.Officials said Brown hopes to harness the popular global support won by campaigns such as Make Poverty History and Live Earth to support his development drive.In a speech to the UN yesterday, Brown pressed an audience of business leaders, non-governmental organisations and international delegates over failures in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.Brown said he had won support from 12 world leaders and 20 leading businesses, including Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., and Wal-Mart to back his drive toward meeting the development goals.Achieving the standards would help the international community “eradicate the great evils of our time: illiteracy, disease, poverty, environmental degradation, underdevelopment,” Brown said.A report card published earlier this month showed that progress toward achieving the benchmarks on reducing global poverty and increasing access to childcare and education, agreed to at a UN summit in 2000, was poor, Brown’s aides said.A failure to meet the objectives would leave current world leaders “remembered as the generation that betrayed promises rather than honoured them,” Brown said in his speech.Nampa-APBritish officials have insisted Brown’s foreign policy will be marked by his desire to mix the use of force and sanctions with backing for development and economic aid programmes.Brown has called it a balance of ‘hard power and soft power’.His attempts to lead the international community in efforts to break an impasse on stalled world trade negotiations and on halting violence in Sudan’s Darfur region are read by some as a bid to atone for predecessor Tony Blair’s unpopular backing for the US-led invasion of Iraq.Officials said Brown hopes to harness the popular global support won by campaigns such as Make Poverty History and Live Earth to support his development drive.In a speech to the UN yesterday, Brown pressed an audience of business leaders, non-governmental organisations and international delegates over failures in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.Brown said he had won support from 12 world leaders and 20 leading businesses, including Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., and Wal-Mart to back his drive toward meeting the development goals.Achieving the standards would help the international community “eradicate the great evils of our time: illiteracy, disease, poverty, environmental degradation, underdevelopment,” Brown said.A report card published earlier this month showed that progress toward achieving the benchmarks on reducing global poverty and increasing access to childcare and education, agreed to at a UN summit in 2000, was poor, Brown’s aides said.A failure to meet the objectives would leave current world leaders “remembered as the generation that betrayed promises rather than honoured them,” Brown said in his speech.Nampa-AP