Poverty is the war we must fight. Developing countries are leading the way. As African leaders are saying in the New Partnership for African Development, "Across the continent Africans declare that we will no longer allow ourselves to be conditioned by circumstance. We will determine our own destiny and call on the rest of the world to complement our efforts." But they cannot do it alone. There is also a need for leadership in the developed world which must grasp the opportunity presented in Monterrey to take the next important step to create that more stable and peaceful world. What is it that leaders in rich countries should do? Rich nations must level the playing field by opening their markets for imports from developing countries. The European Union's lead on the Everything But Arms Agreement should be followed by others and the benefits should be extended to all low income countries now to end the trade barriers that harm the poorest nations and poorest workers. This action does not need to wait on WTO agreement. Of course, there will be powerful political lobbies ranged against any such action. But it is the task of political leaders to remind electorates that lowering of trade barriers will not cost the rich countries anything in the aggregate; they gain from freer trade in these areas.

Rich nations must also cut agricultural subsidies. Farm support goes mainly to a relatively small number of agri-businesses, many of them large corporations, and yet those subsidies are six times what the rich countries provide in foreign aid to a developing world that includes five billion people. There are powerful political lobbies ranged against this action too. But the fundamental truth is that agricultural subsidies constitute a heavy burden on the citizens of developed countries. With skillful political leadership they can be cut back. And reducing these subsidies would have the additional benefit of yielding significant budgetary savings for governments of rich countries.

Rich countries must also recognize that, even with action on trade, or agricultural subsidies, there is still a fundamental need to boost resources for developing countries. We estimate that it will take on the order of an additional $40 to $60 billion a year to reach the Millennium Development Goals‹roughly a doubling of current aid flows‹to 0.5 percent of GNP, still well below the 0.7 percent target agreed to by global leaders years ago. Budgetary realities may make it impossible to double aid overnight. But if a "New Partnership" is to work, we must commit to matching the efforts of developing countries step by step with a phased-in increase in aid, say an additional $10 billion a year for the next five years; building to an extra $50 billion a year in year five. As we in the international development community‹international institutions and bilateral agencies, governments and nongovernmental organizations‹look to the challenge before us, we must also learn from the past.

For too many poor people, the cold war years were years when development stalled or even reversed, when monies were lent for the sake of politics, not development. We must not forget that lesson. But we have also seen great success and we can build on that. Over the past 40 years, life expectancy at birth in developing countries has increased by 20 years, about as much as was achieved in all of human history prior to the middle of the 20th century. Over the past 30 years, illiteracy in the developing world has been cut almost in half, from 47 percent to 25 percent in adults. Over the past 20 years, the absolute number of people living on less than $1 a day, after rising steadily for the previous 200 years, has for the first time begun to fall, even as the world's population has grown by 1.6 billion people. Driving much of this progress has been an acceleration of growth rates in the developing world‹more than doubling the income of the average person living in developing countries over the past 35 years.

These advances have not come by chance. They have come by action, by developing countries themselves, but also in partnership with the richer world and international institutions, with civil society and the private sector. I believe we have a greater chance today than perhaps at any other time in the last 50 years to win that war and forge that new partnership for peace. Monterrey is an opportunity to deepen that partnership and take concrete action on trade and aid. We must not let this opportunity pass.

James D. Wolfensohn is President of the World Bank Group.