Summit Addresses Africa's Despair, Desires

U N I T E D   N A T I O N S, Sept. 7 -- Burdened by debt, war, poverty and AIDS, Africa is getting special attention at the U.N. Millennium Summit, with world leaders calling for a new commitment to bring the continent out of its misery and give its people hope.

“One more day of delayed action is a day too late for ourpeople,” pleaded Botswana’s President Festus Mogae, whose country is among those hardest hit by AIDS. “Our people are crying out for help. Let us respond while there is time.”

Mogae today appealed for “tangible and adequate resources” to educate his people about the virus, test and counsel them, and provide them with the expensive drugs now being used to combat the disease. A third of Botswana’s adults are infected with HIV.

Mali’s President Alpha Oumar Konare called for world leaders to “assume the duty of our generation” and combat ignorance about AIDS, the leading killer in sub-Saharan Africa.

Education of Africa’s young and women, he said, “must enlighten the new millennium.”

Call for Partnership to Help Africa

About 150 world leaders — the greatest assembly of presidents, prime ministers, monarchs and other rulers in history — listened as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Clinton, Cuba’s Fidel Castro and a long line of others addressed the unprecedented session Wednesday.

Qatar’s Emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, opened thesummit’s second day by urging the United Nations to get more involved in Mideast peace efforts — a call that came as leaders, including German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, planned meetings with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to try to persuade him to make decisions needed to conclude a peace agreement.

But Africa remained a major concern. Blair, in an addressfocused entirely on Africa and U.N. peacekeeping, had called for world governments to enter into a new partnership with the continent to help it settle its conflicts and encourage its economies to develop.