Brown to stress 'soft' power at UN after 'hard' talks with Bush
Wednesday, 1 August 2007
NEW YORK, July 31 (AFP): British leader Gordon Brown is due to address the United Nations Tuesday on the need to focus on meeting key poverty reduction targets, a day after reaffirming support for Washington on tackling extremism.
The prime minister, who arrived in New York Monday night after two days of talks with US President George W. Bush at his Camp David retreat north of Washington, is due to meet UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon Tuesday morning.
He will then make a speech to assembly members, which aides said would focus on how to achieve the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), progress on which is behind schedule eight years before they are due to be completed.
"The prime minister is going to focus on what we need to do to achieve those goals," a Downing Street official said, amid concern some countries are failing to honor the commitments they signed up to in 2000.
The goals include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality and empowering women; reducing child mortality; and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
Brown, who as finance minister in 2006 announced at least 15 billion dollars in British funding for education in Africa over the next decade, has talked with rock star activist Bono in the last month, the official disclosed.
With fellow rocker Bob Geldof, the U2 frontman helped push global poverty up the agenda at the G8 summit of leading industrial nations that Brown's predecessor Tony Blair chaired at Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005.
The prime minister, who arrived in New York Monday night after two days of talks with US President George W. Bush at his Camp David retreat north of Washington, is due to meet UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon Tuesday morning.
He will then make a speech to assembly members, which aides said would focus on how to achieve the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), progress on which is behind schedule eight years before they are due to be completed.
"The prime minister is going to focus on what we need to do to achieve those goals," a Downing Street official said, amid concern some countries are failing to honor the commitments they signed up to in 2000.
The goals include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality and empowering women; reducing child mortality; and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
Brown, who as finance minister in 2006 announced at least 15 billion dollars in British funding for education in Africa over the next decade, has talked with rock star activist Bono in the last month, the official disclosed.
With fellow rocker Bob Geldof, the U2 frontman helped push global poverty up the agenda at the G8 summit of leading industrial nations that Brown's predecessor Tony Blair chaired at Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005.