UN Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo on Friday to head a panel to advise him on meeting the finance needs of developing nations.
The panel is due to report by early May, ahead of an international conference on financing for development, to be held in 2002.
Announcing Zedillo's appointment at a news conference, Annan noted that official aid flows to the Third World had been "in steady decline for well over a decade."
At the same time, he said, "many poor countries are so indebted that the net transfer of resources, in the form of interest and repayments leads, to a net outflow to industrialized countries, instead of the other way round."
Annan said it was "vital that we turn this situation around and ensure that developing countries receive the financial resources they need."
Other members of the panel include former EU commission president Jacques Delors of France, and former US treasury secretary Robert Rubin.
Zedillo said the panel would meet several times in Geneva, but would have no permanent base. Its members would mostly exchange views via the Internet, he said.
"The secretary general has given us a list of things he expects the panel should be discussing," he said.
But, while the panel had "an extremely ambitious agenda," he said it was too early to be specific about its contents.
Annan said the date and venue of the international conference had yet to be determined -- UNITED NATIONS (AFP)
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