THE US: Global business leaders and politicians, who yesterday were winding up a five-day gathering at the World Economic Forum in New York, have agreed that poverty is both immoral and will be bad for the bottom line in a slowly recovering world economy.
Shielded from demonstrators by heavily armed police, an estimated 2,700 participants in the annual forum conferred in a Park Avenue hotel on the fate of the planet after the September 11th attacks.
"We have to go after poverty, we have to go after despair, we have to go after hopelessness," the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, declared in the early stages of the forum.
"We have to put hope back in the hearts of people. We have to show people who might move in the direction of terrorism that there is a better way," Mr Powell said.
Lawmakers at the Porto Alegre forum also rejected the idea that military action alone can halt terrorist violence, condemning in particular the Bush administration's designation of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil". In a resolution, they said they were "convinced that a military escalation will not conquer terrorism and that war cannot be the way to solve the world's problems". The Porto Alegre meeting also included harsh criticism of the US and its military campaign in Afghanistan.
"Today, arms have won, bombs have won, the absence of dialogue has won . . . and for that reason the organisations that could guarantee mediation have been weakened," charged Guatemalan peace advocate, Ms Rigoberta Menchu, the 1992 Nobel peace prize winner.
The US likewise came under scrutiny in New York, where the issue of poverty soared to the top of the agenda. The forum noted that the US ranks 22nd in a table of countries and the percentage of their gross domestic product allocated to foreign aid.