Zapatero says Spain to join Lula's war on hunger

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said yesterday he would join Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's campaign against world hunger, as Spain steers from its previous pro-Washington course.

Socialist Zapatero called yesterday for European powers to take a more active role in international affairs with greater emphasis on fighting poverty in the developing world - something Washington says is best left to the private sector.

"Next week I will meet in New York with the group led by Lula, the alliance against world hunger," Mr Zapatero told a rally. "Spain is among the five members who support this great aim, to change things so that those with nothing can have a future."

A critic of US foreign policy who irked the US by pulling Spanish troops from Iraq on taking office in April, Mr Zapatero says he wants to remain allies with the United States but has made closer European ties a top priority.

Mr Zapatero is to meet in the UN headquarters on September 20 with the other members of the "Quintet Against Hunger": Lula, French President Jacques Chirac, Chilean President Ricardo Lagos and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The five will propose a global alliance against hunger aimed at achieving the UN goal of halving the number of hungry and undernourished people by 2015.

Brazil and France are among nations that have made proposals on how rich states can reach a goal of diverting 0.7 per cent of their gross domestic product to help developing countries.

US President George W. Bush's administration does not recognise the 0.7 per cent goal and is pushing for solutions through the private sector.

"How things have changed," Mr Zapatero told the rally, referring to the previous government of conservative Jose Maria Aznar, who allied Spain closely with the US.

In his bid to secure a leading Spanish voice in European diplomacy, Mr Zapatero will host an informal summit in Madrid today with Mr Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

"Let those who talked about 'Old Europe' see what 'New Europe' is. 'New Europe' wants a voice in the world to defend international law and peace," Mr Zapatero said, in an apparent reference to US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's description of European opponents of the US-led war in Iraq war as "Old Europe".