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J. Brian Atwood, US Foreign Aid A
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.