Yet the record of foreign deals in rich countries is not good.

ECONOMIST: Electricity

Yet the opposite has happened in America, Britain and other rich countries where inequality has risen over the past 30 years.

ECONOMIST: The poor like taxing the rich less than you would think

Regardless of their environmental benefits, alternative energy supplies have not yet proved cheap or abundant enough to wean the rich countries from their oil addiction.

FORBES: Magazine Article

In particular, the rich countries have, as yet, failed to come up with enough money to make up the shortfall in the debt relief fund.

ECONOMIST: Hoping for more | The

Yet once the global quota system for textiles is removed in 2005, rich countries may resort to trade-remedy rules to protect themselves from increases in textile imports from poor countries.

ECONOMIST: Trade-remedy laws are damaging the world trade system

Yet even as rich countries hand out more money with one hand, with the other they continue to make life difficult for the world's poorest by excluding them from rich-country markets.

ECONOMIST: The education of Paul O'Neill | The

Yet with higher trade barriers, on average, than rich countries, they have the most to gain from further liberalisation.

ECONOMIST: World trade

EU, if not yet as a member, include its value as a diplomatic and commercial bridgehead into the energy-rich, newly independent countries of Central Asia, and as a cultural bridgehead into Islam.

ECONOMIST: The European Union decides it might one day talk Turkey | The