U.S. Aid Commitments ... trying to "wriggle out" of its commitments ... Bush administration never agreed to support the goals

U.N. Accused of Distorting U.S. Aid Commitments: "By Colum Lynch | Washington Post Staff Writer | Friday, September 2, 2005; Page A06

Administration Denies Having Endorsed Specific Targets Known as Millennium Development Goals

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 1 -- The Bush administration has accused senior U.N. officials of "manipulating the truth" by suggesting that the United States is backsliding on commitments made over the past five years to increase foreign assistance to the world's poor.

The remarks came one week after John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told U.N. delegates for the first time in writing that the Bush administration never agreed to support the goals, which call for increased funding to drastically reduce poverty, halt the spread of HIV/AIDS and eradicate a host of deadly diseases by 2015.

But Bolton and other administration officials have expressed support for the 2000 Millennium Declaration, a document that included the specific goals.
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Bush unveiled the centerpiece of his development policy, the Millennium Challenge Account, at a U.N. summit on development in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2002. The administration pledged to spend $1.7 billion in 2004, $3.3 billion in 2005 and $5 billion per year thereafter to help select countries. But the program has been plagued by delays, and the United States has reached agreements with only three countries. The largest deal is to spend $215 million in Honduras over five years.

The United Nations, meanwhile, has said that Bush and other leaders of industrial powers endorsed the Millennium Development Goals at the Group of 8 summit in Evian, France, in 2003. It also noted that Bush endorsed the Monterrey Consensus, an agreement that urged wealthy countries to "make concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7 percent of gross national product" in foreign assistance. ...
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Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist who is advising U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on development, charged Wednesday that Bolton's assertion that the United States never backed the Millennium Development Goals was "without ground." He said the goals are drawn "straight from the Millennium Declaration" and that the administration is simply trying to "wriggle out" of its commitments.