U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the Group of Eight (G8) rich nations on Monday to help Africa by agreeing to promote fairer rules of international trade at their summit this week. "Most countries, given the chance, would prefer to trade themselves out of poverty rather than live on handouts," Annan told reporters at a meeting of African Union (AU) heads of state and government in Libya. Annan said he welcomed agreement by G8 nations in recent weeks to expand development assistance and debt relief to Africa, Reuters reported. But he hoped the summit in Scotland would pave the way for progress at the current Doha round of World Trade Organisation negotiations giving Africans greater access to rich country markets. "I hope the leaders will commit to ensuring that the trade round, the Doha round, is really a development round and it levels the playing field," he said. Developing countries, many of them mainly agricultural economies, complain that subsidies to farmers in rich countries make it hard for them to compete in Europe and the United States. --More 2313 Local Time 2013 GMT
