EU Says Australia Too Close To US In Trade Talks

“The European Union's trade chief on Monday defended a decision not to attend a summit in Australia designed to revive stalled global trade talks,” reports Reuters (08/07).

“EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said Australia should take a more balanced approach to the World Trade Organization (WTO) talks, which collapsed in July after ministers failed to reach an agreement on farm subsidies and market access for agriculture. … Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile rejected the criticism, saying Australia had been an honest broker and was not biased towards any side in the stand-off. …”

The Associated Press (08/07) adds that “… [While he would not be attending himself,] Mandelson said the EU would be represented. … Mandelson [further] said the Cairns Group meeting is not the only forum at which the Doha round could be revisited. …”

Xinhua (China, 08/07) notes that “… the meeting was initially for the Australian-led Cairns Group of 18 farm-exporting countries to mark the 20th anniversary of the formation of the free trade group, but it was expanded to include the US and EU as the last-ditch effort to salvage the failed Doha free trade talks. …”

In related news, Dow Jones (08/04) writes that “UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Friday called for reviving global trade liberalization talks so that developing countries can use trade to lift millions out of poverty. Annan, making his first trip to the Dominican Republic, said the WTO's long-struggling Doha round of trade talks were in ‘crisis.’ ‘I used the word crisis - I didn't say it's dead,’ Annan said in a speech at the presidential palace in the capital of Santo Domingo. …”

EFE News Service (08/05) reports that “Brazil confirmed that on September 9-10 it will host a high level meeting of the G-20 developing nations to discuss the WTO Doha round and ‘alternatives that favor negotiations.’ ‘Other developing countries are also being invited to take part, particularly those that are currently coordinating regional or special interest groups in the WTO,’ a Foreign Ministry communique said Friday. WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy was also invited ‘and he said that he plans to attend the event,’ the statement said. …”

Reuters (08/04) notes that “the Brazilian government said on Friday it welcomed a US move to cut cotton subsidies this week but that the move was insufficient to comply with a WTO ruling. …” 

World Bank Grants Kenya $60 Million For Drought Recovery

“The World Bank has approved a $60 million credit to assist emergency drought recovery in Kenya’s arid areas after consecutive seasons of poor rains have affected more than three million people,” reports Reuters (08/05).

“‘By extending this credit, we are addressing urgent needs arising from the recent drought emergency,’ Colin Bruce, World Bank Country Director for Kenya, said in a statement obtained by Reuters late on Friday. … The Bank said $20 million would reimburse the Kenyan government for audited amounts it had spent on non-food emergency drought response. The additional $40 million would support longer-term investments, such as new and improved water supplies and natural resource management activities, the Bank added. …” 

Xinhua (China, 08/04) and People’s Daily Online (China, 08/05) write that “… the Bank’s project is designed to scale up and broaden support for affected Kenyan communities while also reinforcing community oversight and local decision making structures. ‘This credit will provide additional financing to the second phase of the Arid Lands Resource Management Project (ALRMP), which has already helped improve the lives of over one million people in 22 districts,’ it said. …” 

The Standard (Kenya, 08/05) writes that “…[Bruce further noted:] ‘The short rains of 2005, which followed five consecutive seasons of poor rains in many parts, have affected nearly 3.5 million rural pastoral and farming people, including half a million school children in 25 districts. …

In approving the credit, the Bank noted the progress Kenya has made in drought preparedness, recovery efforts and mitigation plans through more than a decade of partnership. The partnership involved the government, the Bank and other stakeholders. …”

WHO to Share Indonesian Data in Bird-Flu Battle

“The World Health Organization (WHO) said it will make public the genetic codes of the bird-flu virus from Indonesia, after the country's health minister agreed to their release late last week amid calls from scientists for greater transparency,” reports The Wall Street Journal (08/07).

“Indonesian health officials have been sending the genetic codes - known as sequences -of the H5N1 viruses that infected people to a WHO-affiliated laboratory in Hong Kong, which would confirm the cases and analyze the viruses. But from there, the genetic blueprint of the virus is held in a password-protected database administered by the WHO and accessible only to a limited number of WHO labs around the world. Scientists have been calling on the WHO and its network of laboratories to release the sequences so that more people can study them and try to determine how the virus is evolving, if at all; how to stop it from killing humans; and how to ward off any mutation to a form that would be easily passed from person to person, which could spark a pandemic. The sequences will now be released to a publicly accessible database. 

‘We've informed the labs that they have Indonesia's permission to upload the sequences to the public databases,’ Dick Thompson, a spokesman for the WHO in Geneva, said yesterday. … The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which has some Indonesian viruses, has informed the WHO that it has made the sequences public after receiving the WHO's request, Thompson added. The WHO is still waiting to hear back from the Hong Kong laboratory. …” 

In related news, Reuters (08/07) writes that “Thailand began a week-long campaign on Monday to check every house in 29 provinces, including Bangkok's suburbs, in a bid to halt a resurging bird flu virus that has killed two people in the last three weeks. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers will scour backyard farms for sick or dead chickens and educate villagers on the H5N1 virus, which re-emerged in July after an eight-month lull. … If any suspicious bird deaths are found, all poultry within a one kilometer radius of the suspected outbreak would be culled immediately, said Agriculture Ministry official, Nirandorn Uangtrakulsook. …” 

Agence France Press (08/07) notes that “a 16-year-old Indonesian has become the latest bird flu case in the hard-hit nation, according to local test results which are usually reliable, a health ministry official said Monday. … If confirmed by a WHO-affiliated laboratory, the case would be Indonesia's 55th. …” 

Reuters (08/06) reports that “cats that died during an outbreak of bird flu in Iraq last February were infected with the H5N1 virus, US naval medical researchers reported.  Any cat that becomes ill or dies when suspected bird flu is circulating should be tested for the virus, the Navy team reported in the August issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.  …”

Dow Jones (08/06) writes that “state-owned vaccine firm Bio Farma will begin production of a human vaccine for the H5N1 avian influenza virus by the end of 2006, the Jakarta Post reported. …”

Romanian News Digest (08/04) notes that “Romanian poultry meat producers reported a combined loss of over EUR 120 million ($153.58 million) following the two bird flu crisis registered in October 2005 and May 2006 in the country, the Union of Poultry Farmers's president, Ilie Van, said on August 4, 2006. The highest loss to the poultry meat producers was caused by the second bird flu crisis from May 2006 when the virus was identified at a poultry farm. … According to the World Bank, possible global spreading of the bird flu could cause a global loss of $1.25 trillion, accounting for the 3.1 perecnt of the $40 trillion global gross domestic product.” 

Experts Take Stock After First Quarter-Century Of War On AIDS

“The biggest-ever council of war on AIDS opens next Sunday, a quarter-century after the disease took its first step in a global rampage that has now claimed more than 25 million lives,” reports Agence France Press (08/06).

“But in contrast to previous meetings where anguish, frustration and protest were often the hallmark, the six-day 16th International AIDS Conference, running in the Canadian city of Toronto, should unfold in a mood of relative optimism and serenity. For the first time in its dreadful history, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) appears to be marking time.

At the end of last year, 38.6 million people were living with the human immunodeficiency virus, the agency UNAIDS reported in May. The global proportion of people infected with HIV ‘is believed to have peaked in the late 1990s and to have stabilised subsequently,’ it declared. At the same time, the rollout of cheaper, lifesaving antiretrovirals to poor countries is pushing ahead. And the risks of which pharmaceutical giants so vociferously warned just five years ago -- mismanagement, corruption, failure to follow a complex drug regimen -- have so far not materialised.

In December 2003, only 400,000 people out of 6.5 million badly-infected people in the developing world had access to these drugs. Two years later, the tally was 1.3 million and has surged further since then. These encouraging events were born of tough experience and campaigning to create a political dynamism about AIDS. In turn, the politicians opened the financial spigots, leading to the more successful prevention, treatment and awareness campaigns that we see today.

‘We have reached a plateau in the history of the AIDS epidemic,’ said Achmat Dangor, UNAIDS' director of advocacy. ‘It's because over the last 25 years, we've learnt some bitter lessons about what to do and what not to do.’ Dangor said the optimism had to be heavily salted with caution, noting that AIDS still claimed 2.8 million lives last year and 4.1 million people became newly infected. …

Around 20,000 doctors, grassroots workers, lab researchers and policy specialists have registered for the Toronto conference, whose VIP guests will include Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and the movie actor Richard Gere. The previous international AIDS conference was held in Bangkok, in 2004. …”

Nigerians Worried Over Exit Of ‘Mrs. Debt Relief’

“The sudden resignation of campaigning Nigerian minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala last week is a blow to the credibility of the government and places a question mark over future economic reforms, Nigerian economists and analysts say,” reports Agence France Press (08/05).

“Former Finance and Foreign Minister Okonjo-Iweala last year spearheaded reforms of the country's finance and economic sectors and negotiated Africa's biggest debt cancellation, worth $18 billion.  … Lagos economist Bolaji Odumesi said the nation was shocked by the news of the resignation and its implications for the reform programs of the government. … Under the former minister, transparency, probity, fiscal and budgetary discipline became the hallmark of government policies, he said. …”

The Independent (UK, 08/05) writes that “… under Okonjo-Iweala's stewardship, Nigeria became the first African country to be freed of its debt to the Paris club of rich nations last April, under a debt-relief deal that was supposed to clear the way for billions of dollars to be spent on reducing poverty. She won over the donor countries by arguing that Nigeria is in fact a poor nation where most of the 130 million population live on less than 60p per day - and one in five children does not reach the age of five.”

The Financial Times (08/07) adds that “… Okonjo-Iweala also presided over a healthy increase in Nigeria's foreign reserves, expected to reach $50 billion by the end of the year. For a country with a sorry record of profligacy and waste, it was no mean achievement. …”

The Vanguard (Nigeria, 08/04) notes that “… President Olusegun Obasanjo immediately accepted her resignation and praised her for her ‘unparalleled patriotism, dedication and loyalty.’ … Speaking on her resignation on television Thursday night, she affirmed that she was leaving to ‘take care of my family… .’ She was ‘grateful for the opportunity to serve’ and described her experience in government as wonderful. …”

Also In This Edition: Briefly Noted…

Xinhua (China, 08/04) writes that Mozambican Prime Minister Luisa Diogo appealed on Thursday to strengthen Africa's role in World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, according to a report on Friday.  Diogo said at the opening of an African central bankers conference in Maputo that Africa's success in economy, social development and anti-poverty depends on its efforts to meet the UN's Millennium Objectives and strengthening its influence in World Bank and IMF. 

The New York Times (08/06) reports that a study found that when girls in impoverished rural areas were given free school uniforms instead of having to pay $6 for them — the principal remaining economic barrier to education in Kenya — they were significantly less likely to drop out and become pregnant.

Agence France Press (08/04) writes that Senegal lost no time in mobilizing after HIV/AIDS first appeared in the 1980s, and is now regarded as Africa's pioneer in the fight against the scourge with its low prevalence rates the envy of many. 

Agence France Press (08/04) reports that the World Bank said Friday that it had granted the impoverished Caribbean state of Haiti a $6 million grant to help its struggling public power company. “This pilot project will contribute to improving the commercial system and customer service and increasing revenue collection for EDH,” Caroline Anstey, Bank Country Director for the Caribbean said. 

The Financial Times (UK, 08/06) writes that aid agencies and recipient governments have attacked European Union aid policy, claiming that Brussels is seeking to wield its financial muscle to strong-arm poor countries into co-operation on migration and terrorism. They say a plan to award an extra EUR 3 billion in “incentives” to countries following policies prescribed by Brussels smacks of old-style aid with strings attached.

The Financial Times (UK, 08/07) and The Irish Times (08/07) report on the World Bank’s new voluntary disclosure program announced last week. 

Today (Singapore, 08/07) writes that some 400 polytechnic students are being trained to serve as hosts during the International Monetary Fund/World Bank meetings in Singapore next month. They will act as guides for delegates traveling on chartered buses.