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Slow foreign aid risks loss of US clout to China: Clinton
Washington (AFP) April 23, 2009 The United States risks losing influence to China because it is sometimes too slow to deliver aid to needy nations, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned here Thursday. Speaking to a congressional committee, Clinton cited the example of an emergency deal signed by China last month to help bail Jamaica out of its financial crisis. "They (Jamaicans) have just signed a memorandum of understanding with China ... and now they have got a government-to-government relationship with China," Clinton said. "We have to be sure we have in place the safeguards so that the money goes where we intend it to go," Clinton told the subcommitee on foreign operations of the House Appropriations Committee. She also urged Congress to move more quickly to deliver promised aid for Mexico's drug wars. "It's just too slow, and when I was in Mexico, that's what I heard from both the president and the foreign secretary," Clinton said referring to her talks with Felipe Calderon and Patricia Espinosa last month in Mexico City. She said the United States, for example, has been slow to release the money needed for Blackhawk helicopters needed to fight the drug cartel. "Let's try to get to the bottom of this because you all do your work, you get it appropriated, I go around talking about what we need to do and it's kind of hollow, and we're losing ground," the chief US diplomat said. "And we're seeing particularly China come in right behind us, because countries get tired of talking to our bureaucracy and decide they're going to cut a deal with someone else," said Clinton. Clinton cited a report in The Washington Post saying China and Jamaica, a traditional US ally in the Western hemisphere, signed contracts for loan packages totaling 138 million dollars in March. The newspaper also said China had signed multi-billion dollar loans for oil with Russia, Kazakhstan, Brazil and Venezuela. It also showed Beijing had signed multi-billion dollar currency swaps with Hong Kong, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Argentina, Belarus and Russia. The newspaper said Jamaica went to China because the United States was preoccupied with its own financial problems. Share This Article With Planet Earth
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