Most Western leaders stay away from UN aid summit except EU
A four-day United Nations conference is getting under way in Qatar's capital Doha to seek ways to limit the impact of the financial crisis on developing countries. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the world's poor countries had been especially hard hit by the widening crisis.Few Western leaders are attending the summit. The heads of the World Bank and the IMF are also absent. French President Nicolas Sarkozy is the only leader of a rich country to be there as well as EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso. Developed countries have so far committed to pay less than 20 billion dollars per year, far short of the 130 million per year set for 2010 by the UN's Millennium Development Goals.
Note EU-Digest: EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso called in Doha on Friday for a "human rescue" plan alongside financial rescue packages, as aid agencies rapped most other major world leaders for staying away from a UN summit on aid. Barroso, who unveiled on Wednesday a 200-billion-euro ($254 billion) stimulus package to revive Europe's ailing economy, said it would be "obscene" to discuss responses to the global financial crisis without also discussing the "human crisis." Speaking on the eve of a UN Conference on Financing for Development, he said it is important to keep on schedule toward achieving the UN's Millennium goals for aid to developing countries.
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