Word: neill
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...think one of you got a bigger one," a tribal chief told Treasury Secretary PAUL O'NEILL when traditional headgear didn't fit him as well as it did BONO, his companion on a trip to Africa. "No," said U2's singer, "just a bigger brain." The modest rocker, who has lent sparkle to the cause of African poverty relief, brought O'Neill on a 10-day fact-finding journey that started last week in Ghana. The unlikely pair will travel through South Africa, Uganda and Ethiopia. O'Neill played the straight man; Bono did comic relief. O'Neill drilled...
...motorcade pulls up and Secret Service agents fan out, the children of Wamili, a village of mud and grass huts in the north of Ghana, break into song. The tribal chief welcomes Bono, leader of the rock band U2, and his traveling sidekick, Paul O'Neill, the buttoned-down U.S. Treasury secretary. Each is presented a traditional robes and a matching floppy hat. Bono's fits nicely. O'Neill's seems several sizes too small. The chief looks apologetically at the Treasury secretary and says, "I think one of you got a bigger one." To which Bono replies with...
...Like heroes in a buddy movie, opposites attract. Striding through Accra's sprawling Makalo market past mounds of fresh pineapple, peppers and salted fish, O'Neill wears black tassel loafers and gray slacks; Bono sports a rumpled safari shirt and his trademark blue wraparound sun glasses. O'Neill, the former head of Alcoa, interrogates vendors on the economics of their business, trying to figure out the impact more U.S. aid might have. Bono walks up to a merchant selling psychedelic tie-died textiles and asks, "Have you ever heard of Jerry Garcia? " When O'Neill's microphone goes awry...
...jokes seem impromptu, the serious part of the script is more predictable. Bono hopes to convince O'Neill that wealthy countries should dramatically increase foreign assistance to Africa; O'Neill , a frequent critic of aid money that he claims is wasted, wants to make sure that future US commitments are well-spent. At each stop, Bono presses for more aid, particularly from the US. And at each stop, O'Neill demurs. "I think Paul O'Neill is going to be a very different person going out of this trip than he was coming in," Bono told TIME after a visit...
...recently announced his "Millennium Challenge", a $10 billion increase in American aid funding over fiscal years 2004-2006. That is more than his Democratic predecessor put on the table, but would still leave US foreign economic assistance the lowest among major industrial nation as a percentage of output. O'Neill is clearly moved by the human cost of Africa's underdevelopment. But the former Alcoa CEO remains hard-nosed about handing out more cash when billions of dollars in economic aid have frequently failed to produce growth over the last 50 years. As O'Neill puts it, "These problems...