The United States is willing to look for ways to fund a "Marshall Plan" for Africa even if it opposes Britain's plan for a new lending facility, South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday. Mbeki, fresh from meeting President George Bush in Washington this week, told the World Economic Forum Africa summit in Cape Town the U.S. leader was willing to help Africa, and Bush hoped commitments would be made at the G8 summit. "The U.S. says, we don't agree on the IFF (British-proposed International Financial Facility) , but what we agree to is to generate funds using whatever mechanisms at its disposal," Mbeki told African business and political leaders at the close of their three-day summit. "What President Bush has said is, give me the target (funding), but leave to me the matter of what method I will use to produce this outcome ... He (Bush) wasn't talking about it being too much money," Mbeki said. Mbeki said he did not expect resistance to the idea to fund the recovery of Africa, close to half of whose nearly 700 million sub-Saharan population live below a $1 a day, but the debate was likely to centre around ways to pay for the effort. The plan devised by British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Africa Commission seeks an extra $25 billion a year in aid until 2010 to help end widespread poverty and disease in Africa, Reuters reported.
