U2's Bono urges Blair to focus G8 on plight of Africa

The U2 singer Bono has made an impassioned plea to the Labour Party conference in Brighton and urged Tony Blair to seize the opportunity of Britain's presidency of the G8 and EU to come to the aid of Africa – a "continent bursting into flames".

In a speech which both praised, chided and cajoled his audience of Labour ministers, trade unionists and grassroots supporters, Bono said that the West had the cash, drugs and science - but questioned whether it had the will to make a difference.

In an early warning to the conference that he had not simply turned up to attach some youth friendly street cred to the party, Bono said that he had come at Tony Blair's invite – a decision the Prime Minister "might well regret".

The Irish musician told delegates that improving the situation in Africa "was not about charity, it's about justice". And if Tony Blair and Gordon Brown failed to "get there in 2005", I know where these people park their cars, he said.

"Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties, it doubts our concern, it questions our commitment. Because there's no way we can look at Africa- a continent bursting into flames -and if we're honest conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else," he said.

The plight of Africa, he explained, affected him after visting an orphanage in Ethiopia.

"On our last day at the orphanage a man handed me his baby and said: take him with you. He knew in Ireland his son would live; in Ethiopia his son would die. I turned him down. In that moment, I started this journey. In that moment, I became the worst thing of all: a rock star with a cause.

"Except this isn't a cause. 6,500 Africans dying a day of treatable, preventable disease-dying for want of medicines you and I can get at our local chemist-that's not a cause, that's an emergency. That's why I'm here today."

(gmcg/mb)