Word: bonos
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...create a defining moment. "We've been doing this now for a few years--pretending this is the one, this is the leap. And in fact, this year was the one. We've had 2005 in mind for quite a while," he says. As early as 2003, Bono and others had picked out a number of unrelated political events--a G-8 meeting that was to have as hosts British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown (dubbed by Bono the "John and Paul of global development"), a meeting of the World Trade Organization...
...debt cancellation?" Debt had been presumed a dead issue--"but all of a sudden these guys are telling us they think they've figured it out," says Hart. "We'd completely flipped roles. Very weird." There were details to iron out, and the Treasury guys insisted Bono not be told for a while (he is a poor secret keeper), but willingness proved 95% of the battle...
...would fall almost precisely on the 20th anniversary of Live Aid, and Bono wanted a concert to prove how far the movement had come. Bob Geldof "didn't want to repeat himself," says Bono, but six weeks before the summit he hit upon the idea of staging free concerts in each G-8 country. After a frenzy of persuasion, cities were lined up, sponsors found and bands, many of which already had concerts scheduled for the day, were persuaded to divert from their itineraries and play for free. "Charm, handsomeness and the fact that [Bono] wrote Where the Streets Have...
...Bono, meanwhile, launched a final burst of back-room politicking, greasing countless surreal encounters with people who had no business being in the same room together. Days before the summit, he visited 10 Downing Street and learned that the G-8's civil-servant negotiators, or "sherpas," who put deals into precise language, were feuding over how to pay for the proposed $50 billion aid package. "We were having a beer," Blair told TIME, "and just decided we would talk to these people who'd done an incredible amount of work, to give them a sense of the importance...
Just before the end of the summit--which was disrupted by the July 7 terrorist attacks in London--Bono dropped by President Bush's suite for a final nudge. "On so many issues it's difficult to know what God wants from us," Bono told Bush, "but on this issue, helping the desperately poor, we know God will bless...