NOVANEWS
Source–thepassionateattachment.com
From the G8 summit, Reuters reports:
The external financing needs of oil-importing countries in the Middle East and North Africa will exceed $160 billion over the next three years and donor countries must step in to help, the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday.
In a report to the Group of Eight meeting in Deauville, France, the IMF urged G8 industrial nations and rich Arab partners to develop an action plan that lays out what help they could provide countries in need.
“The region needs to prepare for a fundamental transformation of its economic model,” Masood Ahmed, in charge of Middle East and Africa at the IMF, told journalists on the sidelines of a Group of Eight meeting in northern France.
“This will be greatly facilitated if international players including the G8 can enter into strategic partnership with these countries…where incentives are linked to a social agenda.”
The external financing needs of oil-importing countries in the Middle East and North Africa will exceed $160 billion over the next three years and donor countries must step in to help, the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday.
In a report to the Group of Eight meeting in Deauville, France, the IMF urged G8 industrial nations and rich Arab partners to develop an action plan that lays out what help they could provide countries in need.
“The region needs to prepare for a fundamental transformation of its economic model,” Masood Ahmed, in charge of Middle East and Africa at the IMF, told journalists on the sidelines of a Group of Eight meeting in northern France.
“This will be greatly facilitated if international players including the G8 can enter into strategic partnership with these countries…where incentives are linked to a social agenda.”
Supporting the IMF’s call for deeper indebtedness to support the supposedly threatening democratic upheaval in the region, U.S. President Barack Obama said:
First, we’ve asked the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to present a plan at next week’s G8 summit for what needs to be done to stabilize and modernize the economies of Tunisia and Egypt. Together, we must help them recover from the disruptions of their democratic upheaval, and support the governments that will be elected later this year. And we are urging other countries to help Egypt and Tunisia meet its near-term financial needs.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron:
Leading nations’ financial support for the so-called Arab Spring will reduce extremism and immigration, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has said. The UK is giving £110m over four years for political and economic development in North Africa and the Middle East. At the two-day G8 summit in France, the UK and US are pushing for other pledges of financial support. Mr Cameron said the summit should send a message to the countries of the Arab Spring that “we are on your side”.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy:
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said it is critical that Group of Eight leaders deliver firm commitments to help Tunisia and Egypt during their two-day summit in France. Speaking at a press conference, G8 summit host – French President Nicolas Sarkozy – said it is critical that the popular revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt succeed. He said mobilizing “considerable aid” is among the central goals of the G8 meeting here in Deauville.
Lest anyone think the three leaders’ putting taxpayers’ money where their mouths are in support of Arab democracy might be a betrayal of the West’s “unwavering ally” in the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured a sycophantic U.S. Congress that the “Arab Spring” is kosher:
Fifteen years ago, I stood at this very podium. By the way, it hasn’t changed. (Laughter.) I stood here and I said that democracy must start to take root in the Arab world. Well, it’s begun to take root, and this beginning holds the promise of a brilliant future of peace and prosperity, because I believe that a Middle East that is genuinely democratic will be a Middle East truly at peace.
