The British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has said he will not scale back his ambitious plan to lift Africa out of poverty, despite signs the G8 countries still disagree on how the goal should be achieved.
Mr Brown and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have declared 2005 a make-or-break year for Africa, pushing other the G8 industrialised nations to adopt plans to fund debt relief and double aid to the world's poorest nations.
“This is not a time for timidity nor a time to fear reaching too high,” Mr Brown said in the Edinburgh. “This year ... is our chance to reverse the fortunes of a continent and to help transform the lives of millions.“
But the G8 summit in Gleneagles is just a month away and Britain -- which holds the rotating G8 presidency - is still struggling to win over key members like the United States.
“We have still got a long way to go in the next few weeks in the run-up to Gleneagles,” Brown told a news conference.
The summit will be the focus of a mass movement to put pressure on G8 leaders, with large demonstrations and huge rock “Live8” rock concerts held in Europe and the United States.
Mr Brown praised charity campaigners and promised to write off the £500,000 tax bill from staging Live8. He said he was in almost daily contact with US Treasury Secretary John Snow ahead of a London meeting of G8 finance ministers next week, which should lay the groundwork for the Gleneagles summit.
South African President Thabo Mbeki, fresh from a meeting with Mr Bush in Washington, said in Cape Town he thought the United States was willing to boost aid but did not want to be tied down on how the increase should be financed.
Mr Brown set out a list of proposals to meet the Millennium Development Goals, which were agreed at United Nations level in 2000 and include halving poverty and disease by 2015.