African leaders urged the Group of Eight rich nations on Monday to keep promises to help their continent and pleaded with them to remember that soaring oil and food prices were making their poverty worse.
The G8 has been accused by activists of reneging on the promise made at its 2005 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, to double aid by 2010 to $50 billion (25.7 billion pounds), half of which would go to Africa.
"Some African leaders just wanted to emphasise that while appreciating G8 leaders' commitment to help Africa in past G8 summits, they just wanted to point that they would like to see these commitments fully implemented," Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kazuo Kodama said.
"They also sent their message that they would really like to see no backtracking, as such, on the part of G8 leaders on their commitments."
The issue of African poverty topped the agenda at the start of a three-day G8 summit in Japan, closely linked with rising food and fuel prices and the contentious topic of how to fight global warming, which the leaders will tackle later in the week.
Citing a final draft of the G8 leaders' communique, Japan's Yomiuri newspaper reported on Monday that they would call rising food and oil prices a "serious threat".
Japan invited the leaders of Algeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania to join the day's discussion at a luxury hotel wreathed in fog on the northern island of Hokkaido.
"African leaders asked for the G8 leadership to help those who are hurt significantly by rising oil prices, such as showing their leadership in talks with OPEC countries," a Japanese official said after the meeting.
BETTER MONITORING
World Bank President Robert Zoellick, who was also at the talks, said the leaders discussed a system to better track the aid to ensure commitments were honoured.
"There was a desire to have greater comfort on both sides on the delivery. So there was some movement towards the idea that the G8 in their process - perhaps with their sherpas - may engage with the African Union commission," Zoellick said.
"Countries need to deliver on their promises, and that was the tone that was generally accepted in the discussion," he told a news conference.
A report last month by the Africa Progress Panel, which was set up to monitor implementation of the Gleneagles commitments, said that under current spending plans the G8 will fall $40 billion short of its target.
This year marks the half-way point to reach eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the U.N. General Assembly in September 2000 to reduce world poverty by 2015.
With grain prices having doubled since January 2006, Africa needs more help, not less, activists say.
