Annan hits at US over move on development text

By Mark Turner in New York and Andrew Balls in Washington 
Financial Times
August 30, 2005
Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, has hit back at US efforts to remove references to the Millennium Development Goals from a statement prepared for a summit next month, as a report showed the US and Britain were among the countries that had done most to improve their help to the developing world.
Any effort to remove the Millennium Development Goals from the summit outcome would be a setback to the global fight against poverty, and for the billions living in poverty, said Marie Okabe, Mr Annan's spokesperson, as UN diplomats were locked in talks to save the summit from failure.
John Bolton, US ambassador to the UN, said there was no doubt the United States supports the development goals of the Millennium Declaration, adopted in 2000, vowing to halve poverty by 2015. But the term Millennium Development Goals had caused confusion, he said.
The 2005 Commitment to Development Index, a ranking of 21 rich countries produced by the Washington-based Center for Global Development, suggests the UK and US have partially matched their rhetoric on development with action.
The administration of George W. Bush has pledged since 2001 to increase the country's efforts in development. Although its score increased by more than most countries, it has moved only from 13th place to 12th in the past two years.
The US has a larger foreign aid budget than other countries measured by dollars, but adjusted for national income it is close to bottom of the list. Although the US scores well for having some of the lowest barriers to agricultural imports, the size of its economy means these cause more harm overall than other countries ranked.
Smaller countries remain the most pro-development, with Scandinavia, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Australia again at the top of the index. Among the Group of Eight leading nations, Germany was in ninth place, Canada 11th, France 15th, Italy 18th and Japan last in 21st place. The UK, which put development and Africa at the centre of the agenda this year when it chaired the G8 summit, was placed 10th, up from 14th in 2003, when the index started. 
The measurement, which adjusts for a country's size, is based on the quality and quantity of each country's aid, openness to imports from developing countries, foreign investment, andpolicies on migration, environment and arms sales.