Furious Geldof hits out at world leaders

Russell Fallis

Geldof told a conference in the Scottish Parliament that the G8 leaders should not come to Britain as planned in July unless they were willing to deliver their pledges on the issues of debt, trade and aid.

He also suggested it was "disgustingly ironic" that the G8 the original G7 group of leading industrialised nations and Russia were meeting at the luxury Gleneagles Hotel resort, an hour north of Edinburgh.

Geldof attacked the West's lack of progress towards targets set in 2000, and including the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, the achievement of universal primary education and a halt to the spread of Aids and HIV.

"We are supposed to have arrived at the first stage of them this year. But we are so far behind achieving what we promised what we swore we would do five years ago that the targets for 2005 will not be met until 2150.

"We're a joke, we are a complete and utter disgrace and we perpetrate this falsity and this lie on the head of the already trodden upon, mute and weak," Geldof said.

He also told of his despair of seeing how Africa had got worse in the 20 years since he launched the Live Aid appeal for Ethiopian famine relief.

Geldof told of a harrowing scene in a hut in southern Ethiopia where he saw three generations sitting around the body of a grandfather.

To the dead man's side his starving widow was squatting on the floor suckling on a woman who appeared to be her daughter.

"How debased have we become?" Geldof said.

"What more do these men meeting in a golf course a golf course, how emblematic, how disgustingly ironic what more do they want?

"Were 50,000 people to die tomorrow in Dundee, were 50,000 to die in Cleveland, were 50,000 to die the next day in Turin, and the next day in Toulouse, and the next day in Ludwigshafen, between the first and second hole these people would have dealt with this problem.

"And I am sick of it. I'm sick to my teeth that they refuse their responsibility as leaders."