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MONTERREY,
Mexico -- Former US President Jimmy Carter is
in Monterrey to attend the International Conference
on Financing for Development, to debate at ministerial
round tables and to criticize President George
W. Bush. While Carter said he was pleased with
Bush's recent pledge of an additional $5 billion
in official development assistance (ODA) over
the
next three years, he also said that it wasn't
enough.
"I
was very pleased with President Bush's statement,
with his commitment," said Carter. "It's
the first time in 15 years at least that we've had
such a weighted and dramatic statement, and I think
that it's very significant that the level of development
assistance will go up. You have to put it into perspective,
however. The US is giving one one-thousandth of our
GNP to development assistance to humanitarian causes,
and if President Bush's plan is carried out we will
be giving twelve ten-thousandths of our GNP. That's
a tiny bit."
Carter said he's learned a lot since his presidency
nearly 20 years ago, when ODA was higher, and
agricultural subsidies were roughly the same
level. The cold war, he said, helped him to
increase ODA levels, since the US considered
it a priority to compete with the Soviets for
third world favor. Now, he said, it is more
important than ever to raise the level of giving,
and he added the US should make a firm commitment
to 0.7 percent of GNP as a goal for ODA.
"There are public opinion polls that
show the average American citizen thinks that
we give five percent of our total GNP to foreign
aid-we give about one-fiftieth of that," Carter
said. "Over half of the world's population
live on $2 per day or less; the average American
family brings in over $50,000 a year, and most
Americans I believe are very generous, but
I think they just don't understand how little
we give and how big the need is."
If the US were to raise its level of giving
to 0.7 percent, it would mean spending more
than 35 times more on overseas aid. But such
a commitment is so firmly rejected by Bush
that in January other nations allowed the Americans
to downgrade the target's importance in the
document from a commitment to an eventual goal
in the consensus paper, fearing that the Americans
might pull out of the conference altogether
if they didn't agree with the resolution-something
that has happened often in the year Bush has
been in office. While many have welcomed Bush's
announcement, Carter, who runs a nongovernmental
organization that runs more than 65 projects
around the world, thinks it should only be
a beginning.
"The level of development assistance
given to poor countries is extremely low, it's
embarrassingly low. In the US we give one one-thousandth
of our gross national product to overseas assistance.
The Europeans give about three times as much,
as does Japan. That is just a drop in the bucket
of what is needed," he said.
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