G77 plus China summit stresses South-South cooperation

CAIRO, Thursday (Xinhua) - The second summit of the Group of 77 (G77) plus China kicked off in Qatari capital of Doha to focus on ways to promote South-South cooperation in addition to South-North ties.

The two-day summit, also known as the second South Summit, is attended by 32 heads of state, in addition to prime minsters, foreign ministers and senior officials of over 130 member states.

The agenda of the summit includes the stance of the G-77 plus China regarding political issues within a developmental framework, mainly Palestine, Iraq and Somalia, as well as means of promoting developmental cooperation among Southern states and ways to deal with poverty and hunger.

The participants will tackle trade among the group, investment, the environment and the role of the UN in terms of development.

In his speech at the inaugural session of the summit, Jamaican Prime Minister Percival Patterson, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the G77, called for boosting development cooperation among member states.

He pointed out that there were two major reasons for the limited success of the G77, namely the failure to provide financial resources to deliver the development objectives and lack of provision of institutional mechanisms at the economic and technical levels.

However, "we have not adequately exploited the potential for cooperation" within the G77, said Patterson, adding the countries of the South should increase economic and technical cooperation.

For his part, host Qatari Amir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al- Thani also called for more efforts to promote South-South cooperation, especially in trade.

Cooperation among developing countries has qualified G77 with their economic weight to be an active partner in the world economic arena, he said.

He added that developing countries are entitled to flexibility that qualifies them to design development strategies that suit them, so that they can adapt to globalization and benefit from it.

The emir also proposed to set up a fund for economic, social, health, poverty and human catastrophes, saying the fund may be called "The South Fund for Development and Human Circumstances" and Qatar will donate 20 million US dollars to the fund.