MONTERREY, Mexico — With missionary zeal, President Bush on Friday sought to redefine the terms of foreign aid, as he called on scores of world leaders to join him in a new U.S. funding initiative that requires developing nations to commit to free trade, political liberty and human rights.
In an address here at the United Nations Conference on Financing for Development, the president denounced "a failed status quo" that provides aid without measuring results. "Developed nations have a duty to not only share our wealth," Bush said. "We must tie greater aid to political and legal and economics reforms."
Bush said he will work with Congress to jump-start the initiative rather than wait until the 2004 budget year--as he had announced last week in unveiling what is being called the Millennium Challenge Account.
At the aid conference Friday, the president laid out the principles and the rationale for the new initiative, which by 2006 would increase U.S. foreign aid from $10 billion annually to $15 billion--with strings attached.
After Bush's initial announcement last week, many in Washington hailed his intention to ask Congress for the added funding. But some, including House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), called on Bush to act more quickly to secure and then deliver the new aid.
Bush's initiative is, in part, an answer to criticism in the international community that the United States gives too little in foreign aid. The U.S. spends far less on such aid as a percentage of its economy--0.1% of its gross domestic product--than many other wealthy nations.
But Bush made clear Friday that he believes it is wrong to measure merely the amount given.
"For decades, the success of development aid was measured only in the resources spent, not the results achieved," Bush said. "Yet pouring money into a failed status quo does little to help the poor and can actually delay the progress of reform. We must do more than just feel good about what we are doing. We must do good."
When a developing nation embraces sound policies, every dollar it receives in foreign aid can attract $2 in private investment, the president said.
"We must build the institutions of freedom, not subsidize the failures of the past," Bush told other leaders here during a morning session.
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