Poverty 'a time bomb against liberty '

MEXICO: Reducing trade barriers and subsidies maintained by wealthy states is one of the quickest and most effective ways to…

MEXICO: Reducing trade barriers and subsidies maintained by wealthy states is one of the quickest and most effective ways to help poor nations climb out of poverty, leaders of global financial institutions said in Mexico yesterday.

"Trade is the most important avenue for self-help," Mr Horst Köhler, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, told a UN conference on international development.

The Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Ms Liz O'Donnell, is representing Ireland at the Monterrey conference. She announced that Ireland would donate an additional €1.5 million to assist poorer countries in economic development programmes and improving their participation in the World Trade Organisation.

Ms O'Donnell called on the world's rich countries to follow Ireland's lead in moving to increase development aid to meet the UN target of 0.7 per cent of Gross National Product.

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She is also co-operating with ministers from a group of countries including Sweden, the Netherlands and Britain to establish a new international organisation which will continue the work of assisting developing countries to represent themselves at the WTO.

The president of the World Bank, Mr James Wolfensohn, struck a similar note while welcoming European and US pledges to boost their spending to help poorer countries. The message to the world's wealthy countries was that they had as much to gain as the poor from opening their markets to an increased flow of exports from impoverished states.

Mr Michael Moore, president of the WTO, cited gains he said would accrue to rich countries from freer trade, which would at the same time benefit the world's poorest nations.

Abolishing all trade barriers "could boost global income by $2.8 trillion and lift 320 million people out of poverty by the year 2015," Mr Moore maintained. While agreeing more aid is needed, he said assistance should be twinned with an effort to make it easier for poor countries to sell their goods into wealthy markets.

Mr Moore called on rich nations to recognise that poverty was a threat to world peace and step up efforts to eradicate it. "The issue has never been trade versus aid. We need both, but aid related to trade capacity is money well spent and will make winners of us all.Poverty in all its forms is the greatest single threat to peace, security, democracy, human rights and the environment.

"It is a time bomb lodged against the heart of liberty."

Mr Köhler said lifting trade barriers "generates income and reduces aid dependency to poor countries, and creates a win-win situation for all". Mr Wolfensohn said hefty agricultural subsidies paid by wealthy states to their farmers should be cut.

Mr Köhler said commitments by the EU to raise development spending to 0.39 per cent of national output by 2006 and the increased dollar commitment of the Bush administration were "significant steps forward", but they could do more.

- (Reuters)

• President Fidel Castro of Cuba said he was being forced to leave the conference because of an unspecified "special situation" created by his attendance.

- (AFP)