Soros tells China to join oil, mine watchdog body
Source: Reuters
By Evelyn Leopold UNITED NATIONS, Nov 27 (Reuters) - China is a major obstacle to tracing revenues and expenditures from oil, miningand other resources in Africa to stem corruption, investor and philanthropist George Soros said on Monday. In the past a country like Angola was turned down by the International Money Fund because it did not meet transparency requirements, Soros told a U.N. panel on development. "Now it can get any amount of financing from China." Soros urged China to join the Extractive Industry and Transparency Initiative, known as EITI, which has some 20 member nations, 13 of them in Africa. It allows watchdog groups and governments to check on revenues paid and where they are spent in such countries as Nigeria, a member of the group. "The main obstacle to further progress is the increasing presence of China (in Africa), which has not subscribed to EITI," Soros said. China's deputy U.N. ambassador, Zhang Yishan, said Beijing did not impose conditions to promote democracy or human rights as many Western countries did. But Soros said he was not referring to a political conditions but "setting standards and obeying those standards." China, which organized a series of meetings earlier this month with African leaders, agreed on 16 trade and investment deals worth some $1.9 billion, which analysts attribute in part to Beijing's need for natural resources. Beijing also offered an aid package of $3 billion in preferential loans and $2 billion in credits and over the next three years. Both men spoke at a day-long conference among governments, business leaders, foundation heads and advocacy groups, organized by U.N. General Assembly President Haya Rashed al Khalifa to take stock of U.N. Millennium Development Goals. The goals, proposed by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and approved by world leaders in 2000, include cutting extreme poverty by half, ensuring universal primary education, and stemming the AIDS pandemic, all by 2015. A key U.N. experiment is the Millennium Village Project in Senegal, Mali, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Malawi. Soros has pledged $50 million. The brainchild of Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economics professor and U.N. adviser, the project in 78 villages is a blueprint for quick rural development and is expected to reach 400,000 people at an annual cost of $50 per villager or about $1.5 million per village over five years.
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