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| Sunday, 26 December 2004 |
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British lawmakers launch AIDS fund plea LONDON, Friday (Reuters) A group of British lawmakers on Friday launched a bid to force the European Union to divert billions of pounds paid in subsidies to its farmers to help the millions of people suffering from AIDS in Africa. A letter in the Daily Telegraph newspaper signed by 22 parliamentarians from the two main political parties and claiming the support of more than 100 others set out to get more than one million signatures and trigger EU action. "We believe that tackling the devastation caused by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most urgent moral challenges facing the world today," said the letter signed by lawmakers including former foreign secretary Robin Cook and former environment minister Michael Meacher. "There are 25 million people living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa and, in the past year, more than two million people died in the region as a result of AIDS," it added. The campaign is based on a little-known clause in the new EU constitution, yet to be ratified by member states, that forces the European Commission to take action in the face of a petition supported by one million signatures. The campaign, which will be taken to the pulpits of churches across the country from Saturday, calls for three billion pounds ($5.75 billion) a year to be siphoned off from the Common Agricultural Policy and diverted into fighting AIDS. It noted that the largest two percent of EU farms receive nearly one quarter of the 32 billion pounds paid out in farm subsidies each year across the bloc. "Halving state handouts to large and competitive agri-businesses would liberate three billion pounds a year to help keep people alive who would otherwise die," the letter said. "And 98 per cent of EU farmers - many of whom do need support - will not have any subsidy removed under such an initiative." The petition is available at www.helpafricapetition.com. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who takes the chair of the G8 group of rich industrialised nations in January for one year and of the EU for six months in July, has pledged to put helping Africa at the head of his agenda. |
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