J. Brian Atwood, US Foreign Aid A

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Subject: J. Brian Atwood, US Foreign  Aid  Agency, Fires his Last Shot


Free Burma Coalition, Australia

Associated Press
July 1, 1999
     
A parting shot from the foreign aid chief
     
By GEORGE GEDDA, Associated Press Writer
     
WASHINGTON
     
J. Brian Atwood has a disquieting message as he prepares to step 
down as head of the U.S. foreign aid agency: Don't believe those 
stories about democracy
and free enterprise enabling developing countries to lift 
themselves out of poverty.
     
And part of the problem, according to Atwood, is what he sees as 
Washington's pinch-penny attitude toward Third World problems.
     
"What will it take to wake up our political leaders?" he asked. 
"More failed states? More wars? More south-to-north migration? 
More transmission of infectious diseases? More terrorism?"
     
After six years as head of the Agency for International 
Development, Atwood will
return to the private sector next week. He could have gone 
quietly, as his
predecessors have done, but decided not to.
     
He gave his valedictory Tuesday at a luncheon at the Overseas 
Development Council, which attempts to sensitize opinion-makers 
on Third World issues.
     
"The sad and even dangerous reality is that globalization and 
the democratic market economy movement have not closed the gap 
between rich and poor," he said.
     
"Much of the change we are seeing is occurring within the 
previous ruling classes of these societies. Some in the donor 
community seem content to nurture
reform without equity."
     
Economic growth, he said, can reduce poverty only with 
investments in health care, education, job creation, community 
development and food security.
     
The industrial world is getting "shamelessly rich" while most of 
the world's people are losing ground, Atwood said. He put the 
ratio of rich to poor at about
65 to 1, or for every $ 65 earned in industrial countries, $ 1 
is earned in poor
ones. About 1.3 billion people live in extreme poverty, he said.
     
Atwood called the government's international affairs budget "a 
joke. There is no
money to do anything," he said. "It's outrageous."
     
He took aim at the congressional class of 1994, the election 
that gave Republicans control of the House and Senate. It was 
filled with "nonpassport-carrying members," Atwood said, a 
not-so-subtle suggestion that such people think provincially, 
not globally.

     
Another source of distress for Atwood was U.S. policy toward the 
United Nations.
"What we are doing to the United Nations system is 
unconscionable," he
said.
     
"At a time when the U.N. is bending under the weight of human 
crises, most emanating from the developing world, we are sapping 
it of its vitality by refusing to pay our bills. Then we 
criticize it for not doing its job."
     
He described as "shameful" a recent compromise under which the 
Clinton administration would pay $ 819 million in arrears on the 
condition that it pay a
smaller share in the future. The congressionally drafted 
approach is "designed to appease people whose real goal is to 
kill the United Nations," Atwood said.
     
Atwood was scheduled to become ambassador to Brazil after his 
service at AID, but Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., the Senate Foreign 
Relations Committee chairman, refused to convene hearings on the 
nomination.
     
Helms was smarting from Atwood's characterization of him as an 
"isolationist" and his accusation that Helms drew up complicated 
government reorganization plans "on the back of an envelope."
     
Atwood withdrew his name from consideration for the Brazil post 
in May.