NYT: Bush Maintains Opposition to Doubling Aid for Africa

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Bush Maintains Opposition to Doubling Aid for Africa
By ELIZABETH BECKER and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: June 2, 2005


WASHINGTON, June 1 - President Bush refused on Wednesday to budge on his administration's opposition to doubling aid for Africa, a major proposal on the agenda for a summit meeting of industrial nations next month in Scotland.

The long-simmering dispute could culminate next week when Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who has advocated the plan, visits Washington in advance of the July session, a meeting of the Group of 8. As host of the meeting, Mr. Blair set the agenda, and he argued during his successful campaign for a third term in office that the world's richest nations had to make a $25 billion increase in support for Africa. But Mr. Bush has been cool to the idea from the start and has resisted making new aid commitments.

Asked Wednesday about the issue, Mr. Bush said, "It doesn't fit our budgetary process."

Meeting the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, in the Oval Office on Wednesday morning, Mr. Bush also renewed his administration's declaration, first made by Colin L. Powell when he was secretary of state, that genocide was taking place in the Darfur region of Sudan....

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While the Darfur crisis, along with the problem of AIDS, has dominated the administration's debate about assistance for Africa, Mr. Blair's call for a vast increase in the amount spent to fight poverty has created considerable tension between Washington and Britain....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/02/politics/02prexy.html