French President Jacques Chirac called Wednesday for a "partnership between market forces and solidarity" in an international effort involving a combination of more development aid, special levies and various financial instruments in order to combat the world's "silent tsunamis" in the form of such problems as poverty, hunger, education and AIDS. In a televised address to the World Economic Forum in Davos - bad weather prevented him from reaching the Swiss Alpine town by helicopter - he warned that "the divide between rich and poor has widened to a frightening degree" and said there would be a "risk of revolt" if populations of Africa, Asia and Latin America were denied ways to secure their futures. "Our shared ambition should be to overcome poverty through a partnership between market forces and solidarity," Chirac said before then listing a number of possibilities for nations, joined by corporations, in raising the funding necessary. He said that while all countries should commit themselves to provide 0.7 per cent of GDP to development aid, even then the money would not be enough. --More 2207 Local Time 1907 GMT
