LONDON — Last weekend the finance ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized countries met in London. British Finance Minister Gordon Brown tried to bounce his colleagues into setting up the largest aid program the world has ever seen: an International Finance Facility (IFF). He called it a new Marshall Plan (referring to the aid program that the United States set up after World War II to finance Europe's reconstruction). The IFF, however, would supply aid only to Africa, a continent that Brown recently visited for the first time.
Brown failed to get the agreement of his fellow finance ministers, thank goodness. He has warned, however, that he intends to press the plan on the G7 heads of state when they meet in Britain later this year. In the second half of this year, Britain will chair the G7 as well as the presidency of the European Union.
To help the leaders take the aid issue seriously, the British government has announced that, along with English white wine, it will be providing French red Chateau Latour 1961 for dinner. At more than $3,000 a bottle, this wine costs more than 10 years' income of the average African worker. That should concentrate the leaders' minds on the aid issue. I hope the wine is corked; then the heads of state just might follow the lead of the finance ministers and continue to deny Brown his IFF. I hope so.