Bush: Follow-through on African aid

By Jon Ward (Contact) | Saturday, July 5, 2008

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President Bush will arrive in Japan on Sunday on a mission to hold leading nations at the Group of Eight summit to their past commitments to give aid to sub-Saharan Africa, but will be confronted, at the same time, by his own government's failure to abide by a commitment to the Japanese.

”The last G-8, people came to the table and said, 'OK, we hear you, now we'll all pledge,'” Mr. Bush told a group of Japanese journalists, according to a White House transcript released Friday. “The question is, have people written checks? And I will gently remind people, to the extent I can be gentle, that it's important for people, when they hear us talk, to know that there will be results.”

The Bush administration's $15 billion to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa over the last five years has been one of the president's greatest foreign-policy triumphs, drawing praise from the international community and aid organizations, and Mr. Bush is seeking $30 billion more over the next five years.

The G-8 nations - the U.S., Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia - pledged in 2005 to double aid to Africa by 2010. A recent study by the One Campaign, however, found that the G-8 nations had contributed only about 14 percent of the $22 billion total they pledged.

“America is on track to meet our commitments,” Mr. Bush told reporters at the White House earlier this week.

However, the Japanese government and people are smarting from the Bush administration's recent flip-flop on an issue of great importance to them. The U.S. told Japan in 2003 that it would not lift sanctions on North Korea until Pyongyang released Japanese citizens who were abducted in the late '70s and early '80s.

But the Bush administration last week decided to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism after Pyongyang gave a declaration of its plutonium-production activities. Mr. Bush called Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to reassure him that he would not forget the abductee issue, but the reaction in Japan has not been positive.

“There is great consternation in Japan about this,” said Michael J. Green, a former top White House adviser on Asian affairs from 2001 to 2006. “This is one aspect of this current agreement that is going to leave a legacy for the administration that is problematic, I'm afraid.”

Mr. Bush tried to reassure Japanese journalists that before he left Washington that he will work through the six-party talks - which include the U.S., North Korea, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia - to bring pressure on Pyongyang to release the abductees, who could number anywhere from eight to 80.

“I happen to believe that it is in your country's interest to have the United States and other countries helping you on this issue” in the six-power talks, he said, adding that he “can understand people saying, 'well, I guess this is the beginning of the end of U.S. concern.' But ... this is the beginning of our concern.”

Climate change will be the other main issue during the three-day summit on the northern Island of Hokkaido, which begins Monday.

Mr. Fukuda and other world leaders would like the U.S. to agree to a 50 percent reduction in carbon emissions by the year 2050, but Mr. Bush has been insistent that while he favors a global agreement, he believes each country should set the particulars.

“A long-term goal is just one piece, but that's a long-term vision. The more essential aspects of the discussion actually center on each nation's development of their own midterm plans and goals, and the structure by which those can be reflected in a new international agreement,” said the president's chief environmental adviser, Jim Connaughton.

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