GERMANY:Chancellor Angela Merkel has promised to deliver on African aid promises at next month's G8 summit on Germany's Baltic coast, but said a binding climate change deal was looking unlikely.
Aid groups have complained that G8 countries are already falling short of the 2005 promise at the Gleneagles summit to increase African aid by €25 billion by 2010.
"The time for setting targets in the international community is over," said Dr Merkel in a keynote address to the Bundestag yesterday. "Now it is about delivering; there is a great deal of political credibility at stake. We will live up to our promises, that's something I say quite clearly."
Next month's two-day summit in the Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm is gearing up to be a showdown between the leaders of the eight leading world economies and at least 100,000 globalisation critics.
Separating the two will be a €12 million security fence and 16,000 police in what authorities are calling Germany's "biggest security operation of all time".
The German leader defended the G8 meeting as a "valuable" opportunity for G8 leaders to meet colleagues from the emerging world economies and to "give globalisation a human face". She appealed to left-wing groups to protest peacefully, saying that violence made dialogue impossible.
"The people who loudly criticise our security measures today would also be the first ones to charge security officials with a lack of preparation if violence broke out," she said. "As for those who protest peacefully, their concerns are not just legitimate; they will be heard."
African advocacy group Data, founded by U2 singer Bono, gave a cautious welcome to Dr Merkel's pledge yesterday.
"Last year, G8 nations did less than half of what they needed to do to meet their Gleneagles commitments, while this year they have done at best a third of what is required," said Data managing director Jamie Drummond.