'Grow up!' Geldof tells Ethiopian leader
Updated on 09 June 2005
Sir Bob Geldof has slammed the Ethiopian leader for the shooting of demonstrators in Addis Abbaba on the day he launched a paperback edition of the Africa Commission report on aid, trade and debt.
Sir Bob Geldof told Channel 4 News the Ethiopian leader shoud 'grow up'.
On Channel 4 News at noon, he criticised the Ethiopian leader Meles Zanawi for violence which left dead 22 people who were protesting against the election result.
Sir Bob had worked closely with the Ethiopian leader on producing the African report.
He said: "Spare me, what are they doing? It is pathetic. I despair, I really despair.
"No doubt, I'll get a briefing from the Ethiopian embassy: 'it wasn't like this, it was like that'. Grow up, they make me puke.
"I know those people, Meles Zanawi is a seriously clever man, what is he doing? What is he doing closing down radio stations, and journalists and that, it's a disgrace. Behave."
A United Nations report ahead of next month's G8 summit in Gleneagles - says targets for poverty and infant mortality look as though they will be missed.
It says 3m African children are likely to die because the international community has failed to honour its promises to slash death rates among the under fives. As a result, there are likely to be five million under five deaths, compared with two million if the targets were met.
Sir Bob said: "I cannot see a greater political problem in the world staring us in the face than the demise of Africa. We need healthy trading partners, we dont need nascent al-Qaida cells, we need them to trade their way out of misery.
"There are reasons to be cheerful, the game's afoot. There is a lot to play for it it happens it will be great ttriumph for us but it will be a miserable defeat for those eight leaders if they don't deliver."
