[South Africa] Mbeki says callous rich to blame for poverty

from Reuters UK

By David Ljunggren

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Callous wealthy nations are indifferent to the plight of the poor as they pursue selfish policies which enrich the few at the expense of the many, South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Tuesday.

"These billions of poor people are increasingly becoming impatient because every year they hear us adopt declaration after declaration and yet nothing practical is done to assuage the hunger pains that keep them awake at night," he told the United Nations General Assembly.

At the Millennium Summit in September 2000, world leaders at the United Nations agreed a series of goals to aid development.

They vowed to cut extreme poverty -- defined as living on less than $1 (53 pence) a day -- by half by 2015 as well as reversing the spread of AIDS.

But Mbeki said poverty was increasing "during an era of unprecedented wealth accumulation and technological advances" and pointed the finger at rich nations, who he said insisted on an unequal relationship with the poor.

"The majority of the human race is entitled to ask the question whether the rich are responding the way they do because the further impoverishment of the poor is to the advantage of the rich," he said.

The Commonwealth of mainly former British colonies, many of them in Africa, last week urged rich nations to keep their promises to end poverty.

Only a handful of developed nations have achieved the goal of spending 0.7 percent of their gross domestic product on international aid.

Mbeki said the rich had directed an "uncaring declaration to the poor of today ... even when they are acutely aware that many in their neighbourhood die of hunger, of preventable diseases and abject poverty".

Mbeki's South Africa is in many ways a microcosm of the global wealth divide, with some of the starkest income disparities in the world and widespread poverty.

But Mbeki himself has been accused by foreign and domestic critics of embracing market-friendly policies at home which have enabled a few blacks to accumulate vast wealth and some to enter the middle class while millions remain stuck in squalor.

Mbeki said the solution to increasing poverty is to reform the United Nations and thereby help overcome "the cold reality of the indifference of the many among the rich and powerful."