US warns of decline in development aid due to crisis

WASHINGTON DC, United States—Key US officials indicated Tuesday that development aid from Washington may decline in the coming years due to a difficult economy and constraints on the US budget.

Although speaking of the “basic moral imperative for development,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner pointed to a “deeply unsustainable” long-term fiscal standing with unemployment hovering near 10 percent and one in eight Americans relying on food stamps.

“We have no credible strategy for making the case this is a reasonably effective use of scarce resources” for the United States as well, Geithner added when discussing US aid to help poor countries develop.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking with Geithner at a conference on “smart power,” scolded lawmakers for focusing too narrowly on spending.

Whether or not one supports the war in Iraq, “we’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars on this war,” Gates said, noting that “we’re now in the endgame” as US troops prepare to leave Iraq by the end of next year.

“We are leaving. We are making a transition to a civilian-dominated process of development, of helping build institutions and so on,” he added.

“But the Congress took a huge whack at the budget the State Department submitted for this process of transition. And it is one of these cases where, having invested an enormous amount of money, we are now arguing about a tiny amount of money in terms of bringing this to a successful conclusion.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned the UN General Assembly last week that France and other rich countries may not be able to sustain their current development aid budgets, despite critics who say the aid is already rather small. –Agence France-Presse