Public Agenda (Accra)
Amos Safo
26 October 2007
column
Accra — As developing countries are struggling to meet the Millennium Development Goals, all efforts by developed countries are geared towards a possible third world war.
The Millennium Development Goals which are the world's agreed goals to cut poverty, hunger, and disease by 2015 are at the halfway point and so far, despite endless words about increasing aid to poor countries, the G-8 countries, led by the USA are reneging on their part of the bargain.
Instead, the United States of America, (the world's only super power and policeman) and its allies are committing huge financial resources towards a possible third world war.
The signs are clear on the wall. President George W. Bush last Thursday October 18 raised the spectre of "World War Three" if Iran was allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. International media quoted Putin as saying that he "recognises it's not in the world's interests for Iran to have the capacity to make a nuclear weapon."
President Bush gave the warning hours after Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, proposed an end to the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme at a meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Teheran.
"We've got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel."So I've told people that, if you're interested in avoiding World War Three, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon", Bush told journalists.
Mr Bush said he was not worried by growing Russian ties to Iran, which has been an American enemy since the 1979 Islamic revolution; though political analysts said his tone betrayed unhappiness about Putin's closeness to Iran.
Iran insists it is only pursuing peaceful nuclear energy, but has twice ignored United Nations resolutions demanding it to stop uranium enrichment, which could be used in making a nuclear bomb.
Feeling increasingly isolated and fearing an American attack, the Islamic republic received a major boost from the visit by Mr Putin, who said US military action against Iran would be wrong.
In his speech in Iran Putin criticized the U.S.-led war in Iraq, in a televised programme, saying it showed the need for resource-rich countries like Russia to build up their armed forces to defend themselves.
"Thank God Russia is not Iraq," Putin said during a live televised national question-and-answer session. "It is strong enough to protect its interests within the national territory and, by the way, in other regions of the world."
"What we are doing to increase our defense capability is the correct choice and we will continue to do that", Putin emphasized.
Plans for the military include new nuclear weapons technology, he said. "We will not only give attention to the whole nuclear triad - strategic rocket forces, strategic aviation and the nuclear submarine fleet - but also other types of weapons," he said.
Besides, a potential conflict between Russia and the United States could be triggered by the struggle over the energy-rich Caspian peninsula. The Caspian, one of the world's largest enclosed bodies of water, has become the center of a new power game involving the United States and Russia as well as its bordering countries, including Iran, over who should control the vast energy reserves under its depths.
International political analysts have noted that over the past few years, the United States has been trying to establish alternative energy routes that would weaken the regional dominance of Russia and Iran, while Russia has sought to control the transportation routes across these waters.
When Vice President Dick Cheney visited Kazakhstan last year, he used the occasion to launch a fierce attack against President Vladimir Putin of Russia, accusing him of rolling back democracy and suppressing human rights.
Analysts say if Cheney's speech is to be taken seriously, the Bush administration was staking out U.S. influence in the region, where it has stepped up plans to build a pipeline that would bypass Iran and Russia.
In addition to Iran and Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan also have Caspian coastlines. And while all of them want a large stake in the oil reserves, and to use the sea for transportation, none of them have been able to agree on the status of the coveted waters.
As the US, Russia and Iran have succeeded in diverting the world's attention on an impeding war the reality of poverty are starring in the face. It would be recalled that after the G-8 Gleneagles Summit in 2005, member countries pledged to double aid to Africa by 2010, but refused to commit themselves to any spreadsheets. The US, in particular insisted on no spreadsheets. The reason was clear. Though the G-8 had made a clear promise, there was no plan on how to fulfill it.
Little wonder that after in 2006, a year after the Gleneagles meeting, aid numbers were boosted by misleading accounting on debt cancellation operations. Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, a renowned social justice campaigner revealed in his article titled "The G-8's Broken Aid Promises", that with those debt cancellation operations largely completed, the data are now revealing the stark truth: development aid to Africa and to poor countries more generally is stagnant, contrary to all the promises that were made.
Specifically, between 2005 and 2006, overall aid to Africa, excluding debt cancellation operations, increased by a meager 2%. In fact, total official development assistance to all recipient countries, net of debt cancellation, actually declined by 2% between 2005 and 2006. Even the World Bank, which usually takes the donors' point of view, recently acknowledged that except for debt cancellation, "promises of scaled up aid have not been delivered", says Sachs.
According to statistics, the G-8, representing nearly one billion people, promised to increase aid to Africa from $25 billion in 2004 to $50 billion in 2010 - a difference that represents less than one-tenth of one 1% of the income of the rich donor world.
Prof. Sachs points out that the Christmas bonuses paid in 2006 on Wall Street amounted to $24 billion. Spending on the Iraq war, which achieves nothing but violence, is more than $100 billion per year. So the G-8's commitment could be honored, if rich countries cared to honor it. Will the drums of a third world war beating, the sabre-rattling and all that could only deny poor countries development aid.
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