Paris - A tax imposed on global financial transactions could raise billions of euros to support economic development, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in an interview published Thursday in the daily Les Echos. "We are talking about only 5 cents (.073 dollars) on every 1,000 euros," Kouchner said. "Applied on a global scale,this contribution could raise 20 to 30 billion euros."
Kouchner said France and Britain would work together on the proposal - which is sometimes know as the Tobin tax - beginning in October at a meeting in Paris on innovative financing at which representatives from 58 countries will take part.
He said French President Nicolas Sarkozy supports the idea and wants the United Nations to launch it.
"Nothing can be done unless there is global cooperation and agreement," Kouchner said. "A UN initiative with a vote of the 192 countries in the General Assembly would have more weight than that of a group of geographically related nations."
He said, however, that it was too soon for the measure to be debated in this month's UN General Assembly meeting. "We need more time," Kouchner said.
He proposed that banks would collect the tax and place it in an account that could be opened whenever it was necessary.
