WRAPUP 2-G8 leaders strike deal on Africa pledge-diplomat

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By Madeline Chambers and Gernot Heller

HEILIGENDAMM, Germany, June 8 (Reuters) - World leaders meeting in Germany turned their attention to Africa on Friday, agreeing a $60 billion pledge to fight AIDS and other killer diseases ravaging the continent, according to a diplomat.

"The issue is now fixed. The text is agreed," a diplomat from a Group of Eight (G8) member country told Reuters during a summit of the club of industrialised nations.

"The agreement within the G8 will follow the U.S. proposal to increase the aid for fighting these diseases to $60 billion in the forthcoming years with $30 billion coming from the U.S."

Merkel will make the deal public on the summit's final day after a meeting with the heads of six African nations. Detail on the plans were not available, making it hard to tell how much new money the deal involves.

The G8 countries had wrangled late into Thursday night about specifics on aid for Africa. They were expected to broadly recommit themselves to pledges made at a 2005 summit in Scotland when they said they would double development funding by 2010.

The $60 billion will be used to combat AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, global diseases that have been especially devastating for African peoples and their economies.

Campaigners for Africa say the $60 billion pledge falls short of U.N. targets for extending treatment to tackle disease.

Two leading campaigners, rock stars Bono and Bob Geldof, put pressure on G8 summit host, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and her fellow leaders from the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan and Russia.

"The chancellor has asked us to trust her and we are tempted, but we cannot risk being let down by the G8 again," said Bono.

KOSOVO, IRAN

Officials were also tackling an impasse over Kosovo's future late on Thursday, with France pushing a plan to delay a U.N. vote on the majority ethnic Albanian province's independence in exchange for Russia agreeing not to veto the outcome.

Russia backs Serbia's insistence it should retain sovereignty over the province, which rebelled against Belgrade's rule in 1998-9. The West regards independence as inevitable and fears delay will stoke violence in the southern Serbian region.

Officials were also discussing Iran and were likely to confirm plans to back "further measures" -- in other words more U.N. sanctions -- against Tehran if it continues to reject U.N. demands to halt uranium enrichment in its nuclear programme.

The United States has accused Iran of having secret plans to build nuclear weapons. Tehran says its nuclear programme is solely for power to benefit its economy.

G8 leaders at the summit agreed on Thursday to pursue "substantial" cuts in greenhouse gases to combat global warming.

On Thursday, G8 leaders agreed to pursue substantial but unspecified cuts in greenhouse gases and work with the United Nations to clinch a new deal to fight global warming by 2009.

The agreement binds the world's largest polluter, the United States, more closely into international efforts to curb the gases scientists say are causing dangerous changes to world weather patterns.

But it does not commit the G8 nations to the firm emissions reduction targets that Merkel had wanted.

U.S. President George W. Bush has refused to sign up to numerical targets before rising economic powers like China and India make similar pledges. Convincing them to join the U.N. process will be crucial to halting global warming.

Russian President Vladimir Putin turned the tables on Bush by suggesting the United States use a Russian-controlled radar instead of U.S. anti-missile hardware in central Europe.

At a meeting with Bush, Putin proposed the United States and Russia should jointly use a radar in Azerbaijan as part of an anti-missile shield that would protect all of Europe.

The new plan took the White House by surprise.

One analyst said the plan would be unacceptable to Washington and was a ruse to force Bush to give up his plan to deploy a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic to protect against attacks by "rogue" states like Iran.

Keywords: G8 SUMMIT/