British finance minister Gordon Brown will this week seek to build a broad, international consensus behind his proposals to fund debt relief and double aid to the world's poorest countries, Reuters reported today. With just a month left before leaders from the Group of Eight industrialised nations gather in Gleneagles, Scotland, there has so far been little agreement among rich countries on the best way to lift Africa out of poverty. But Brown hopes the combination this week of European Union finance ministers meeting in Luxembourg and Prime Minister Tony Blair's visit to Washington will raise support for Britain's proposals ahead of next weekend's G8 ministerial meeting in London. "At a time when there is an urgency about the need to act, what we are proposing is nothing less than a new deal between rich countries and poor countries," Brown will say in a speech in Newcastle on Monday, according to a Treasury official. "A new global economic alliance that engages the richest G8 countries and all 25 countries of the European Union from the richest to the poorest." G8 finance ministers meeting in London at the end of the week will also be joined by their counterparts from China, South Africa, Brazil and India. --More 2322 Local Time 2022 GMT
