Blair: Africa needs as much help as tsunami victims

Thursday, 6 January 2005 12:00 AM

Victims of poverty and war in Africa deserve the same 'generosity and solidarity' from the British people as those who have suffered in the Asian tsunami, Prime Minister Tony Blair said today.

Speaking at his monthly press conference, he said the energy shown in dealing with the current disaster must be transferred to helping Africa solve its problems, although he admitted they did not affect people so strongly.

Mr Blair said that the tsunami had been a "terrible" natural disaster and the British people had responded with "remarkable" spirit.

However, he added that terrible things were happening every day in areas such as Africa, many of them preventable. He said that the world should redouble efforts to help not just those affected by the tsunami but also the "victims of man".

And he wanted to take some of the "extraordinary" spirit shown in the past few weeks and use that to awaken people's feelings about the "tragedy and catastrophe" in Africa.

The Prime Minister confirmed previous comments that he believed the UK's aid contribution would run into "several hundreds of million of pounds". The money would come from various budgets, including those of the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence, but there were no further details at the present moment.

He admitted that although the tsunami was a natural disaster, human failures in the warning systems had been a factor, and that the poverty of countries such as Sri Lanka and Indonesia had contributed to their inability to deal with its consequences.

But he pointed out that many countries now saying they were capable of dealing with the disaster response would not have been able to say that 30 years ago. This showed that although some people believed failure was inevitable in the developing world, there were success stories that proved that was not true.

Furthermore, the Prime Minister played down talk of renewed tensions with the Chancellor Gordon Brown as they both made key public appearances on international development at the same time.

He said that Mr Brown has "done a superb job as Chancellor and I am very happy with the job he is doing."

And he insisted that the two were absolutely united on the agenda for action in Africa.

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