G-8 to Pledge $20 Billion for Food-Security Initiative

U.S. Ups Its Commitment to $3.5 Billion Over 3 Years

By JONATHAN WEISMAN and STACY MEICHTRY

AFP/Getty Images

U.S. President Barack Obama, right, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, center, attend a meeting at the G-8 conference.

L'AQUILA, Italy -- Group of Eight leaders, after a last-minute push from U.S. President Barack Obama, will pledge $20 billion over three years for a new "food security" initiative, a late victory for a summit that has limped along and failed to meet other expectations.

Much of that money had been previously pledged to food aid. For instance, of the Obama administration's three-year, $3.5 billion a year pledge, a little less than half is new money. But on Thursday, it looked like G8 leaders would pledge only $12 billion over three years, an actual drop in current aid spending.

"One of the things we're going to have to do is fight the temptation towards cynicism," Mr. Obama said after climate-change talks Thursday.

World leaders here largely punted on big decisions or promised future action. A meeting on nuclear weapons is to be held in Washington in March, Mr. Obama said, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced he would soon propose changes to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty requiring states suspected of building nuclear weapons to prove they aren't.

After the group failed to agree on greenhouse-gas emissions targets, Mr. Obama said finance ministers were directed to develop programs for financing climate-change mitigation and climate-control technologies before the Group of 20 nations meet in September, and to reach emissions-reduction targets before December. The leaders agreed to restart and conclude the next round of global trade talks -- but not until 2010.

Amid the lackluster results, officials here found themselves defending the existence of the G-8, as economic powers, such as China, India and others, rise outside the club

The food initiative could be a highlight.

Inside the G-8 Summit

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Associated Press

President Obama on Wednesday greeted European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, left, as world leaders looked on at the G-8 Summit in L'Aquila, Italy.

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Mr. Obama had hoped to secure a robust agricultural aid program before his Saturday trip to the West African nation of Ghana, where he will tell the Ghanaian Parliament that recipients of U.S. assistance must bring to their agricultural-aid programs the same efficiencies and effectiveness that have been applied recently to health efforts, especially on AIDS and education.

"Insofar as he'll be talking about a new way of looking at food security, it will certainly only serve to reinforce the argument that he'll be making in Ghana. That is to say that we have responsibilities, but that the Ghanaians and Africans generally, as well as people in other developing nations, also have responsibilities," said Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough.

Before the gathering, G-8 officials had been promoting a three-year, $15 billion initiative to launch what they are calling a "green revolution" focused on improving agricultural productivity and the livelihoods of the rural poor. Advocates of development aid have noted that $15 billion is at best what developed nations already provide in food assistance. At worst, it may represent a decline.

In response, the Obama administration -- one of the few to pledge real aid increases -- pressed for more before the summit's conclusion.

"Obama's dragging the G-8 along, but at this point, the money's not looking all that good," said Gawain Kripke, U.S. policy director for Oxfam International, an advocate of development aid.

In an interview, Jacques Diouf, director-general of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization played down the amount of aid the G-8 would collectively pledge, noting that the real challenge lay in getting individual governments to deliver on their promises through tighter coordination.

The G-8 nations on Thursday pledged by the end of 2010 to have concluded global trade negotiations. The talks -- known as the Doha Round, after the Gulf State city where they were started -- would focus on where they foundered: agricultural subsidies and trade barriers to services.

"There is a really important political goodwill shown by the president of the United States towards having a clear and ambitious target, 2010, to get an agreement -- not just to negotiate," Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said.