August 01, 2007	Wednesday	Rajab 16, 1428

WASHINGTON, July 31: The World Bank endorsed a call by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Tuesday to accelerate progress toward meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals to cut global poverty in half by 2015.

“The World Bank welcomes Prime Minister Brown’s leadership and focus on the MDGs,” the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, said in a statement.

“I look forward to attending a session hosted by the United Nations secretary general this September to concentrate on achieving the MDGs in Africa,” he said.

Brown, in an address to the United Nations in New York, called for a new humanitarian alliance to help meet key world poverty reduction targets, evoking a “coalition for justice” in the spirit of the US Peace Corps.

The British leader said that although it was a “remarkable moment” when countries signed up to the MDGs in 2000, the pace of change is now too slow and the world was “a million miles away from success.”

The British government said 12 world leaders, including France, Japan, Germany, Spain, India and Brazil, had signed a joint pledge for “urgent action” to help meet what Brown described as a “development emergency” in the world.

Zoellick said the World Bank -- a leading source of development assistance for the poorest countries -- stands fully behind the initiative.

“We will do all we can to support the programme Prime Minister Brown has outlined, including through the important drive to replenish funding for the International Development Association (IDA), critical for the most impoverished countries,” Zoellick added.

Created in 1960, the IDA is an arm of the World Bank that offers interest-free loans and grants for programmes that stimulate economic growth in countries whose populations earn on average less than $2 a day, most of which are located in sub-Saharan Africa.

The UN set a 15-year timeframe at the turn of the millennium to achieve its goals of halving extreme poverty, boosting health and education and further empowering women across the developing world.

Halfway through this process, the report released in early July by 20 UN agencies showed progress at the halfway mark showed more efforts were needed to reach the goals.

The eight MDGs focus on progress in the areas of primary education, gender equality, development, child mortality, maternal health, environmental sustainability and the fight against major diseases such as HIV/AIDS.—AFP