Help poor by ending export subsidies: Brown

The world's rich countries need to set a date for ending trade-distorting subsidies to their farmers in a concerted effort to help the poor, British finance minister Gordon Brown will say on Wednesday. Britain has declared 2005 a make-or-break year for Africa and the impoverished continent will top the agenda at next week's summit of the Group of Eight rich nations in Gleneagles, Scotland under London's presidency.
In a speech to UNICEF in London, Brown will say the long-term objective for Africa is "empowerment", according to Treasury officials.
"It used to be said: 'what can we do for Africa, what can we do about Africa?' But these are yesterday's questions," Brown will say. "Today's question, the question that matters, is 'what can Africa, empowered, do for herself?'"
While progress has been made this year, Brown will say more must be done if Africa is ever to free itself from poverty and disease, particularly on trade liberalisation, transparency, education and health.
"We cannot any longer ignore what people in the poorest countries will see as our hypocrisy of developed-country protectionism," he will say.
"We should be opening our markets and removing trade-distorting subsidies and, in particular, doing more to urgently tackle the waste of the Common Agricultural Policy by now setting a date for the end of export subsidies."
Farm export subsidies are a bone of contention in what is known as the Doha round of global trade liberalisation talks.
The European Union has said it would be willing to drop the export aid in a Doha round deal if others promise the same.
Britain has long argued that EU agricultural subsidies, which benefit France's farmers most, need to be scrapped, an issue that has fuelled recent tension between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac.
Brown will stress the importance of the poorest countries themselves being able to decide their own trade reforms, rather than being directed from outside.
He will also stress the importance to development of democracy, which should be founded on transparency.
Brown will issue a "call to rich and poor countries alike - as well as to foreign companies and investors - to open our books, be fully transparent and for each of us to account for our actions for all to see."