Bono urges EU leaders to wage war on poverty

Date: 13/12/01

"Summit should do something history might remember'

By David Cronin

ROCK legend Bono has urged EU leaders meeting at the Laeken summit not to allow "narrow law and order concerns" to obscure the need for them to tackle the global poverty which provides a fertile breeding ground for terrorists.

In an exclusive interview with European Voice, the U2 frontman and drop-the-debt campaigner called on Europe's governments to back UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown's call for the creation of a €56-billion international development fund.

"We should really gather around Gordon Brown's proposal because it has numbers," said the Irishman, named European of the Year at last week's EV50 awards ceremony. "It's not just rhetoric, it's an actual plan."

Bono said Commission chief Romano Prodi, Lionel Jospin, Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder all "have the will" to improve the lot of the world's poorest people and urged them to "really do something that history might remember".

While the discussions on combating terrorism at Laeken will concentrate on security issues such as the proposed European arrest warrant, Bono argues that this should not be allowed overshadow the need to fight poverty.

"At the start of the 21st century, it might be the right time to put a relationship that is so wrong to right between the developed and the developing world. That might be the only fitting memorial for the lives that were lost on September 11 - that the world would not be just a less dangerous place but a fairer, more inclusive place.

"As well as having a moral force, the argument has a strategic sense about it," he said. "[US Secretary of State] Colin Powell was the first person to describe HIV/AIDS as a security issue for the United States - and that was way before 11 September. Any reasonable mind who studied the issues must concede that someone who has no hope and has nothing to lose is easy prey for al Qaeda and the like.

"If you go to Botswana and sit in a crowded bar or market place and you realise 35 of the people in this crowd are HIV positive and that none of them will have access to anti-retroviral drugs simply because of their geographical location or the colour of their skin, you could understand how such a death sentence - which HIV is on the continent of Africa - could make a militant into a terrorist."

The Jubilee campaign which Bono fronts has recently widened its focus beyond debt relief to also call for fairer trade and increased development aid. "It's inexcusable that the great exponents of free trade are themselves not allowing the poorest of the poorest countries to sell them their ground nuts or coffee or cocoa beans," he commented.

While several EU leaders have been happy to have their photographs taken with the man who penned such chart hits as Pride (In the Name of Love) and Beautiful Day, his campaign has drawn criticism from development chief Poul Nielson.

The Danish commissioner has dismissed Jubilee's reservations about the highly-indebted poor countries (HIPC) initiative, which sets conditions under which debt relief can be granted. Earlier this year, Nielson described the scheme, designed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, as "the greatest show in town in terms of poverty reduction".

Bono claimed that if the HIPC was effective it could make a significant difference for debt-ridden economies. But "what happened with HIPC was that after three years only one country had reached completion point [on debt relief].

"Most of the HIPC countries were still spending more serving their debts than on health and education. This was totally unacceptable and we had to criticise the process," he said.