US ACCUSED OF STYMIEING POVERTY ELIMINATION GOALS

The US isn't against eliminating world poverty, it opposes the bureaucratization of the process:

On August 26th, [Bolton] wrote to his peers at the UN “to eliminate any possible misunderstanding”. America supports the development goals of the Millennium Declaration, he insisted, but it does not support the Millennium Development Goals. Confused? Mr Bolton explains that America signed up to the goals expressed in the 2000 Millennium Declaration—which include most of the headline targets such as halving poverty and hunger by 2015, promoting universal primary schooling, and cutting child mortality by two-thirds—but not to the full panoply of indicators and schedules formulated by the UN secretariat the following year.

As The Economist notes, many of these goals are difficult if not impossible to measure. Anyway, a US compromise has been accepted:

With little time left before next week's U.N. summit, negotiators accepted a U.S. compromise on development during divisive talks on a document world leaders could support, delegates said on Thursday.

The Bush administration had wanted to eliminate the phrase "Millennium Development Goals, "jolting most U.N. members, including allies in the European Union. The words refer to eight objectives on poverty, hunger, primary education, AIDS and others, with targets to be achieved by 2015.

The new language, tentatively accepted by a negotiating group of 32 ambassadors, would "ensure the timely and full realization of the development goals and objectives that emerged from the major United Nations conferences and summits, including those agreed at the Millennium Summit that have been known as the Millennium Development Goals..."

It's worth noting that the Reuters article has an attempted dig at the US objection to the 0.7% of GNP for poverty relief goal:

The United States, which objects to the goal, pays less than 1 percent of its GNP while the European Union has set a timetable to meet the 0.7 target by 2015.

And when the goal's met, it will still be less than 1%. Duh.

Labor's foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd, a bit behind the knowledge curve on this issue, urges the Prime Minister to stand up to the evil American empire:

"Achieving world consensus around the Millennium Development Goals has been very hard therefore we should resist efforts by the Americans or anyone else to water down these hard-won commitments."

"I'd urge the Australian Government to resist any such American pressure."

The US is just a bit worried about pouring any more money into the UN black hole.

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