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‘Pledges to foreign aid must be kept despite credit crisis’

* 500 representatives attend day-long summit on international development aid hosted by President Bush

WASHINGTON: At a time when the global economic crisis is affecting the most vulnerable countries across the globe, the United States (US) and other developed countries must honour their commitments to foreign assistance, the Bush administration said on Tuesday.

US President George W Bush was to make a pitch for continued support to poor nations on Tuesday when he hosted a day-long summit on international development aid. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and musician and activist Bob Geldof were among the attendees.

“Don't let this financial crisis become a human crisis,” Geldof said on Monday in a statement previewing the event.

Summit: The event brought together about 500 representatives of nations – from Africa to Romania – that receive US aid including faith-based organisations, non-governmental organisations, and private and public leaders from the US and the developing world.

“Given the recent economic downturn where there is concern that developing countries and their citizens will be more vulnerable, it's more important than ever that we and other developed countries keep our commitments and continue to fund development assistance programmes, as well as work to increase trade,” White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said.

US Aid Administrator Henrietta Fore said on Monday that in all regions of the world, the Bush administration has doubled, tripled or quadrupled development assistance. She said the administration also has worked to reform US foreign assistance through projects like the president's initiative on HIV/AIDS and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which provides aid to nations that embrace democracy and free markets, fight corruption and invest in education and health.

Dean of the Hubert H Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota and Administrator of the US Agency for International Development during the Clinton administration, J Brian Atwood praised the Bush administration's work to link aid with measurable results, although he said the idea actually took root in the 1990s.

But Atwood criticised the current, as well as previous administrations, for not co-ordinating US international aid work.

“They haven't done anything about the basic structural problem, which is that our foreign aid programmes are scattered all over the map,” he said. “They are chaotic and incoherent and you're not getting the bang for the buck that you would get if you would have, for example, a single cabinet department running the whole show like they do in the United Kingdom,” he added. ap

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