Former UN Sec. Gen-Kofi Annan

On climate change, aid, food prices and trade the G8 had warm words but made scant real progress, reaffirming a 2005 pledge to give the continent $50 billion by 2010 -- of which only $10 billion has so far been given -- and calling for completion of the long-stalled Doha world trade negotiations.

"We are ... putting pressure on them to honour what they have committed to including coming out with a timetable that would indicate how they are going to implement what they have promised," Annan told Reuters by telephone.

"What is the point of a huge jump in promises when they haven't delivered what they promised in 2005," he said from Sweden where he is taking his first holiday since mediating the Kenyan political crisis earlier this year.

Annan was speaking for the Africa Progress Panel, a lobby group including former British prime minister Tony Blair, musician Bob Geldof, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo and former International Monetary Fund head Michel Camdessus.

"It is not a huge amount of progress. But if we can push them to deliver the $40 billion promised between now and 2010 I think we would have achieved something," he said.

He welcomed the positive G8 comments on the urgent need to complete the Doha round of trade talks aimed at easing global commerce, but said he wasn't holding his breath.

"A fair trading system with a level playing field that removes all the restrictions and the impediments to free trade ... will help African countries a lot," Annan said.

"Africa is going to be the next frontier and enlightened businessmen and leaders have seen that. They would much rather trade themselves out of poverty rather than live on handouts."

Annan called on African leaders and the international community to come up with a solution to the political crisis in Zimbabwe which he said was destabilising southern Africa.

The G8 summit condemned the re-election of President Robert Mugabe last month amid widespread violence and intimidation and agreed to impose more sanctions against his regime.

"Some of the leaders of Zimbabwe tend to look at it as an internal problem. It is much bigger than that. It is a regional problem. It has thrown up several million refugees and this tends to destabilise your neighbours," Annan said.

"It is important that it be resolved."

But he cautioned against cutting deals that favoured one or other political agenda simply to achieve a quick resolution.

"It is important for the politicians in Zimbabwe to understand that they are not the country. There is a country with millions of citizens. Their own political ambitions may be important to them but there are bigger things at stake."

Annan welcomed the G8's agreement to cut global emissions of climate warming carbon gases by half by 2050 but said any future global climate deal must include the polluter pays principle, something they have been reluctant to agree.

"When it comes to climate change I am really appalled and upset by the injustice. The poor who have nothing to do with the pollution are the ones who are paying the biggest price.

"For the sake of justice and morality those who pollute must pay. There must be a cost for the polluters and the money we collect from them should be used to help the innocent, the poor who have had hardly anything to do with this." Annan said.

Source: Reuters 

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