Police cancelled a planned protest march on Wednesday outside the Group of Eight (G8) summit after demonstrators smashed car windows, threw rocks and tried to blockade one of the main approach roads to the exclusive Gleneagles resort hosting the summit.
Live 8 organiser Bob Geldof, heading to Scotland on Tuesday, said it would be ”grotesquely irresponsible” for politicians to back down from promises of aid for Africa. But Britain’s Treasury chief Gordon Brown warned that anti-poverty campaigners may be disappointed when G8 leaders announce their package of aid to Africa.
Finance ministers from the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations will try to reach agreement on Friday on a British-American proposal to cancel billions of dollars in debt owed by the world’s poorest countries. The deal would cover 18 nations eligible for debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative.
Sensitive diplomatic talks over Iran’s nuclear programme appear doomed to failure, a leading think-tank said on Tuesday on the eve of crucial negotiations between European foreign ministers and Iranian officials in Geneva. Britain, France and Germany hope to persuade Tehran to scrap its uranium-enrichment programme.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s commission on Africa has come up with a road map to recovery for the continent, but countries must now cooperate and focus on priorities if the project is to succeed, the only American member of the task force said.
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/ 26 February 2004
British intelligence agents spied on United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan in the run-up to the Iraq war, a former member of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Cabinet said on Thursday. Blair refused to say whether the allegation was true, but said the former minister had been ”deeply irresponsible”.