US Spurns Annan's $1 Bln Plea for Global AIDS Fund
And the main reason is that the US wants the dollars to go to help those suffering, and working to alleviate the suffering, not to the horrificly corrupt UN beauracracy which eats up over 1/2 of the funds.
The United States rejected on Wednesday U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's plea to inject $1 billion a year into a global AIDS fund.
"It's not going to happen," U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Randall Tobias told a small group of reporters at the 15th International AIDS Conference in Bangkok.
"The President has requested $200 million for next year and I think that is more than adequate to meet the requirements of the Global Fund in terms of getting money out for putting programs in place," he said.
Annan called on Tuesday for the United States to contribute at least $1 billion a year, echoing a plea from Richard Feachem, the executive director of the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which needs more than $3 billion for 2005.
[b]Tobias said The US taxpayers were leading the global fight against AIDS and spending nearly twice as much to fight the pandemic as the rest of the world combined. [/b] But controversy about its payments to the public-private Global Fund, launched in 2002 as a brainchild of Annan, has overshadowed discussions at the AIDS summit this week.
Critics have condemned the United States for pursuing a go-it-alone strategy in setting up its own $15 billion five-year AIDS action plan, rather than folding its efforts into the international body.
Tobias said the Global Fund was an important part of Washington's strategy but that bilateral programs allowed it to move more quickly and aggressively in the war on AIDS, which has killed 20 million people.
The Geneva-based fund's first priority should be to increase its infrastructure and capabilities on the ground to put existing money to work, he said.
"There are those in the Global Fund who would like to continue to approve more grants and increase the number of grants in the pipeline," Tobias added.
"Our position is the Global Fund needs to focus on getting the money to work and that really the energy needs to be going there, and probably not be looking at another round of grant proposals until some in mid-2005."
AIDS activists want the Global Fund to announce funding for a fifth round of treatment and prevention programs before the end of this year.
US Spurns Annan's $1 Bln Plea for Global AIDS Fund