Mandela backs Britain's Marshall plan for poor

PRETORIA - Nelson Mandela threw his weight behind Britain's "Marshall Plan" for tackling poverty and debt in Africa on Sunday, saying he would travel to London in February to help lobby rich countries to get on board.

"My first impression is that it is a good scheme and I wish more people would have a Marshall Plan for Africa," the former South African president and anti-apartheid icon told reporters at his family home in Qunu in Eastern Cape province.

Britain has pledged to make Africa a top priority as it takes over presidency of the G8 group of industrialised nations and launched a plan to help poor countries, including the cancellation of debt, smashing trade barriers and boosting aid.

Mandela spoke after he and his wife Graca Machel met Britain's finance minister, Gordon Brown, who is touring the world's poorest continent in a bid to put poverty and development high on the agenda of rich nations this year.

A frail-looking Mandela, 86, buried his last son, who died of Aids, on Saturday. As he met Brown, his family were still tidying up after a reception which followed the funeral.

Brown told journalists later in Pretoria that Mandela and his wife had accepted an invitation to go to London for a G7 finance ministers meeting on February 4 and February 5 to urge the world's top industrial countries to make poverty a priority.

"I am very pleased he has decided to do that," Brown said, adding that Mandela had huge influence with leaders in Africa and the developed world.

"Mandela has supported our funding proposals for development, he supports the Marshall plan. He was very helpful in his suggestions for how we might move forward," he said.

Brown said Mandela had already begun calling European leaders to help get them on board with Britain's plan to remove trade barriers, which are hurting poor countries, and encourage them to take global poverty more seriously.

Africa accounted for six per cent of world trade in the 1980s, but this has dwindled to two per cent.

Brown said he had discussed debt relief, Britain's plan for doubling annual aid for developing countries and action on HIV/Aids.

Mandela has announced that his son Makgatho, 54, died of the disease, breaking an African taboo on talking about an epidemic estimated to affect one in nine South Africans -- more people than anywhere else in the world.

"We must remove the stigma (of Aids)," Mandela said on Sunday, noting that he had suffered from tuberculosis but no one had stigmatised him since, apart from saying: "This old man is old, let him pass away now."

Mandela has talked increasingly of death in the past year, after losing many relatives, friends and comrades.

The trip is rare for Mandela, who officially bowed out of public life last June and has become increasingly frail. But he still makes occasional public appearances and travelled to an Aids conference in Bangkok last July to plead for more cash and cooperation to fight the killer virus.

- REUTERS