Today Minister of International Development Hilde F. Johnson appealed to the UN General Assembly to intensify efforts to combat world poverty so that the Millennium Development Goals can be reached by 2015.She urged the G-8 countries to agree on increasing their aid at their meeting in Scotland in July.

Ms Johnson is participating in the UN High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development in New York on 27 and 28 June. The meeting is an important part of the preparations for the UN Summit in September, where important decisions will be made on the relationship between development, peace, security and the environment.

She said that the Millennium Development Goals can and must be reached, but that they won’t be unless the donor countries and the developing countries improve their efforts in the form of better governance and more resources. She added that our actions have not yet matched our words.

The Minister stressed that world leaders must renew and strengthen their commitments at the G-8 meeting in July and at the UN Summit in the autumn. In New York, she will have talks with British Secretary of State for International Development Hilary Benn, UN Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette, and USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios, among others.

Ms Johnson will be going on to Washington, where she will have talks on 29 June with US Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick and World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz on the need for increased aid and multilateral debt relief and the situation in Sudan.