June 29, 2002	Saturday	Rabi-us-Sani 17, 1423

CALGARY, June 28: With one eye on the World Cup and one on the plight of developing Africa, aid agency Oxfam on Thursday issued a damning “post-match” analysis of the Group of Eight summit.

With tongue firmly in cheek, the British agency gave G8 leaders a risible collective rating of three out of 10, even though they went public with a new action plan for Africa.

“This was a summit that promised much but failed to rise to expectations — a team of strong individuals that should play well together failed to deliver the goods,” Oxfam said.

“Team captain” Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien won the best grade, a six out of 10 for struggling to keep Africa’s development woes on the agenda of the two-day summit in the secluded Kananaskis resort.

But President George W. Bush, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi were panned.

Bush, whose game is baseball, not football “showed no signs of wanting to be a team player,” Oxfam complained, adding that a US agriculture bill recently signed by Bush “was a bad tackle that left African farmers gasping for breath.”

Berlusconi showed some “elaborate footwork” but was accused of losing interest, while Putin scored one out of ten for never getting “off the bench. Clearly longs to be accepted by his teammates.”

French President Jacques Chirac, who saw France’s football heroes crash out of the World Cup in the first round, earned a three out of 10.

Tony Blair’s performance mirrored that of the hardworking, skill-challenged English World Cup team, according to Oxfam, in that he did a lot of running around for Africa, but failed to achieve much.

Gerhard Schroeder, who will watch his German team take on Brazil in the World Cup final, earned a three out of 10, one mark below Japan’s Junichiro Koizumi, who came in with a four.—AFP