| World Bank boss pleads with rich nations to dig deep and help poor World Bank president Robert Zoellick has warned failure by rich countries to top up a fund to help poor countries would "devastate" the fight against global povertyFailure by rich donor countries to provide fresh resources for a fund to help poor countries would "devastate" the fight against global poverty, the president of the World Bank has warned.Robert Zoellick said it was critical for the achievement of the eight millennium development goals that the developed world dig deep, despite financial constraints caused by the global recession.All 192 member states of the UN have committed to achieving the goals, including wiping out extreme poverty and reducing child mortality rates, by 2015.The bank is seeking donations to replenish its International Development Association (IDA) fund. This provides soft loans and grants to the 79 poorest countries. Zoellick wants to at least match the $41bn (£26bn) raised for the last three-year programme. "Lack of support for the IDA would devastate the effort to achieve the millennium development goals," Zoellick said. "What was very clear to me at recent UN meetings was that it is critical not to see these goals as independent, but to connect the dots that show their inter-relationship."And the IDA is maybe the only concessional funding system that offers grants or no-interest loans to allow countries with a sense of ownership to connect their development efforts with donor efforts from other countries."Officials from donor countries will meet in Washington today to gauge support for the 16th round of IDA funding, with the aim of making pledges by the year end.Britain was the biggest single donor to IDA 15, providing more than £2bn, but International development secretary Andrew Mitchell said it was too early to say how he would respond to the appeal.Mitchell said the UK's contribution would depend on his department's multilateral aid review, a study launched by the government into how well money provided by Britain is spent by international organisations such as the bank and UN."I don't want our position on the IDA to be arrived at by sticking a finger in the wind," Mitchell said in Washington, where he was attending the bank's annual meeting. "We will be generous. We will do our bit. But I want to know what other countries are going to do."Zoellick said the bank was also looking to fast-developing nations for support."We are asking former IDA beneficiaries to accelerate payments; we are making IDA recipients that are close to graduating out of the programme pay more; we are asking emerging donors to contribute to reflect growing economic weight; and we are looking to mobilise our own resources."Zoellick said the IDA was fundamental to achieving the millennium development goals. "I think we have a pretty good recognition of that, and I think our team did a pretty good job over the past couple of days of emphasising the results that are so important to donors and recipients."World BankGlobal economyDevelopmentUnited NationsLarry Elliottguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Bonfire or camp fire of the quangos? Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude explains why he cannot give details of job losses or savings to be made from a cull of quangos, bbc.co.uk |
Yemen Says Militants Cornered Yemeni security officials said that government forces have trapped al Qaeda militants in a village in Abyan after a week of bombardments that have driven hundreds of civilians out of the area. online.wsj.com |
Great dynasties of the world: The Kennedys They reached for the moon and paid the priceThe Kennedys are not just a family – they are an industry. There are Kennedy biographies, Kennedy genealogies, and bibliographies, and bio-bibliographies, and essays, and books of photos, and books of reminiscences, and who's whos, and compendiums, and novels, and TV specials, and DVDs, and posters, and mugs, and key-rings, and fridge magnets, and tote bags, and baseball caps. The Kennedy family history is like a palimpsest, made into a collage: JFK in the motorcade; Bobby Kennedy in Los Angeles; Jackie Kennedy in shades; Ted Kennedy shaking the hand of Obama. "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." "Ich bin ein Berliner." "Like my brothers before me, I pick up a fallen standard."Where to begin, telling the Kennedy story? One could start with Patrick Kennedy and Bridget Murphy and the potato famine, and the leaving of Ireland in 1849 for the promise of a better life in America. Or one could begin with Patrick and Bridget's fourth child, Patrick Joseph – PJ – Kennedy, who started out working as a stevedore and who became a bar owner and ended up as a wealthy politician in Boston. But probably the best place to begin is with Patrick's son, Joseph.Joseph went to Harvard, became a banker and quickly made his millions on the stock market, in real estate, steel, Hollywood, and through liquor. He became US ambassador to Britain, and the first chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. But, more importantly, in 1914 he married Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald, daughter of the mayor of Boston, and they had nine children. Joseph's ambitions for himself were certainly high, but his ambitions for his children were limitless and gloriously fulfilled: one became US president; one, attorney general; another a senator.In their book The Kennedys: An American Drama (1984), Peter Collier and David Horowitz describe Joseph as a "homegrown Faust". A man of volatile temper, he drove himself and his children forward relentlessly. According to Collier and Horowitz, "the distance the Kennedys had come in half a lifetime was almost incalculable". Joseph's grandparents had fled Ireland, starving. Joseph crossed the Atlantic to England in 1938 as ambassador, wealthy, famous and with eyes on the office of president.But when he died, aged 81, in 1969, Joseph had seen two of his sons assassinated and one killed in the second world war. He had authorised a lobotomy on his eldest daughter, Rose Marie, which left her mentally incapacitated. His next daughter, Kathleen Agnes, died in a plane crash in 1948. He was a philanderer, a bully and, arguably, an antisemite. Ronald Kessler's The Sins of the Father: Joseph P Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded (1996) makes a comprehensive case against. Will Smith, in The Kennedys Amidst the Gathering Storm (2008), paints a more favourable picture. Dozens of books tell all the stories from every perspective.People talk of the Kennedy curse. But the greatest Kennedy curse never happened. During the second world war, Joseph Kennedy was an appeaser. In 1940, he announced that "Democracy is finished in England." Fortunately, he was wrong.The end of the incredible Kennedy story probably comes with the famous speech by Joseph's youngest son, Ted, brother of John and Bobby, at the 2008 Democratic national convention. "We are told that Barack Obama believes too much in an America of high principle and bold endeavor, but when John Kennedy called of going to the moon, he didn't say it's too far to get there ... This is what we do. We reach the moon. We scale the heights. I know it. I've seen it. I've lived it ... The work begins anew. The hope rises again. The dream lives on." The Kennedys reached the moon. And paid the price.Edward KennedyJohn F KennedyJackie OnassisFamilyIan Sansomguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
China 'ready to abandon North Korea' Leaked dispatches show Beijing is frustrated with military actions of 'spoiled child' and increasingly favours reunified KoreaChina has signalled its readiness to accept Korean reunification and is privately distancing itself from the North Korean regime, according to leaked US embassy cables that reveal senior Beijing figures regard their official ally as a "spoiled child".News of the Chinese shift comes at a crucial juncture after the North's artillery bombardment of a South Korean island last week that killed four people and led both sides to threaten war. China has refused to condemn the North Korean action. But today Beijing appeared to bow to US pressure to help bring about a diplomatic solution, calling for "emergency consultations" and inviting a senior North Korean official to Beijing.China is sharply critical of US pressure tactics towards North Korea and wants a resumption of the six-party nuclear disarmament talks. But the Guardian can reveal Beijing's frustration with Pyongyang has grown since its missile and nuclear tests last year, worries about the economic impact of regional instability, and fears that the death of the dictator, Kim Jong-il, could spark a succession struggle.China's moves to distance itself from Kim are revealed in the latest tranche of leaked US embassy cables published by the Guardian and four international newspapers. Tonight, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said the US "deeply regrets" the release of the material by WikiLeaks. They were an "attack on the international community", she said. "It puts people's lives in danger, threatens our national security and undermines efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems," she told reporters at the state department.The leaked North Korea dispatches detail how:• South Korea's vice-foreign minister said he was told by two named senior Chinese officials that they believed Korea should be reunified under Seoul's control, and that this view was gaining ground with the leadership in Beijing.• China's vice-foreign minister told US officials that Pyongyang was behaving like a "spoiled child" to get Washington's attention in April 2009 by carrying out missile tests.• A Chinese ambassador warned that North Korean nuclear activity was "a threat to the whole world's security".• Chinese officials assessed that it could cope with an influx of 300,000 North Koreans in the event of serious instability, according to a representative of an international agency, but might need to use the military to seal the border.In highly sensitive discussions in February this year, the-then South Korean vice-foreign minister, Chun Yung-woo, told a US ambassador, Kathleen Stephens, that younger generation Chinese Communist party leaders no longer regarded North Korea as a useful or reliable ally and would not risk renewed armed conflict on the peninsula, according to a secret cable to Washington.Chun, who has since been appointed national security adviser to South Korea's president, said North Korea had already collapsed economically.Political collapse would ensue once Kim Jong-il died, despite the dictator's efforts to obtain Chinese help and to secure the succession for his son, Kim Jong-un."Citing private conversations during previous sessions of the six-party talks , Chun claimed [the two high-level officials] believed Korea should be unified under ROK [South Korea] control," Stephens reported."The two officials, Chun said, were ready to 'face the new reality' that the DPRK [North Korea] now had little value to China as a buffer state – a view that, since North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006, had reportedly gained traction among senior PRC [People's Republic of China] leaders. Chun argued that in the event of a North Korean collapse, China would clearly 'not welcome' any US military presence north of the DMZ [demilitarised zone]. Again citing his conversations with [the officials], Chun said the PRC would be comfortable with a reunified Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the US in a 'benign alliance' – as long as Korea was not hostile towards China. Tremendous trade and labour-export opportunities for Chinese companies, Chun said, would also help 'salve' PRC concerns about … a reunified Korea."Chun dismissed the prospect of a possible PRC military intervention in the event of a DPRK collapse, noting that China's strategic economic interests now lie with the United States, Japan and South Korea – not North Korea."Chun told Stephens China was unable to persuade Pyongyang to change its self-defeating policies – Beijing had "much less influence than most people believe" – and lacked the will to enforce its views.A senior Chinese official, speaking off the record, also said China's influence with the North was frequently overestimated. But Chinese public opinion was increasingly critical of the North's behaviour, the official said, and that was reflected in changed government thinking.Previously hidden tensions between Pyongyang and its only ally were also exposed by China's then vice-foreign minister in a meeting in April 2009 with a US embassy official after North Korea blasted a three-stage rocket over Japan into the Pacific. Pyongyang said its purpose was to send a satellite into orbit but the US, South Korea and Japan saw the launch as a test of long-range missile technology.Discussing how to tackle the issue with the charge d'affaires at the Beijing embassy, He Yafei observed that "North Korea wanted to engage directly with the United States and was therefore acting like a 'spoiled child' in order to get the attention of the 'adult'. China encouraged the United States, 'after some time', to start to re-engage the DPRK," according to the diplomatic cable sent to Washington.A second dispatch from September last year described He downplaying the Chinese premier's trip to Pyongyang, telling the US deputy secretary of state, James Steinberg: "We may not like them ... [but] they [the DPRK] are a neighbour."He said the premier, Wen Jiabao, would push for denuclearisation and a return to the six-party talks. The official also complained that North Korea "often tried to play China off [against] the United States, refusing to convey information about US-DPRK bilateral conversations".Further evidence of China's increasing dismay with Pyongyang comes in a cable in June 2009 from the US ambassador to Kazakhstan, Richard Hoagland. He reported that his Chinese counterpart, Cheng Guoping. was "genuinely concerned by North Korea's recent nuclear missile tests. 'We need to solve this problem. It is very troublesome,' he said, calling Korea's nuclear activity a 'threat to the whole world's security'."Cheng said Beijing "hopes for peaceful reunification in the long term, but he expects the two countries to remain separate in the short term", Hoagland reported. China's objectives were "to ensure they [North Korean leaders] honour their commitments on non-proliferation, maintain stability, and 'don't drive [Kim Jong-il] mad'."While some Chinese officials are reported to have dismissed suggestions that North Korea would implode after Kim's death, another cable offers evidence that Beijing has considered the risk of instability.It quoted a representative from an international agency saying Chinese officials believed they could absorb 300,000 North Koreans without outside help. If they arrived "all at once" it might use the military to seal the border, create a holding area and meet humanitarian needs. It might also ask other countries for help.The context of the discussions was not made explicit, although an influx of that scale would only be likely in the event of regime failure. The representative said he was not aware of any contingency planning to deal with large numbers of refugees.A Seoul embassy cable from January 2009 said China's leader, Hu Jintao, deliberately ducked the issue when the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, raised it at a summit."We understand Lee asked Hu what China thought about the North Korean domestic political situation and whether Beijing had any contingency plans. This time, Hu apparently pretended not to hear Lee," it said. The cable does not indicate the source of the reports, although elsewhere it talks about contacts at the presidential "blue house" in South Korea. ChinaNorth KoreaSouth KoreaThe US embassy cablesUS foreign policyNuclear weaponsUS national securityUnited StatesSimon Tisdallguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |