France's President Jacques Chirac yesterday called for a tax on airline fuel and tickets by the end of the year to fight epidemics in Africa in what could be a test for a more far-reaching tax on financial transactions.
Chirac made his proposal at the end of a three-day visit to Japan, which was marked by a dispute over his push to lift an EU embargo on selling weapons to China.
"France and Germany together are calling for the creation by the end of the year, along with all countries that wish, for a first international solidarity tax on kerosene and airline tickets to fund the fight against Aids and the great pandemics that are decimating Africa," Chirac said.
"More than 3 million lives saved each year: that's what is at stake," Chirac told a French-Japanese economic forum.
The French leader said he presented the idea during talks on Sunday with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and wanted to take it forward at the July Group of Eight (G8) summit in Scotland and at the September summit of the UN in New York.
"I hope strongly that we can accomplish these goals together in the upcoming G8 and UN summits," Chirac said.
The idea could serve as a testbed for more far-reaching ideas to fund international development or the fight against HIV/Aids.
In January, Chirac listed a number of options before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, including a "contribution" on international financial transactions or a tax on capital movements in or out of countries with secretive banking practices.
The idea is supported by Germany, Spain, Brazil and Chile. But the US is firmly opposed and Japan is sceptical, as are many in international business.
The proposals are variations of the so-called Tobin tax, named after US Nobel laureate James Tobin. In 1971 he came up with the idea of taxing capital flows as a way of reducing speculation on global markets.
Chirac delivered the address a day after disagreeing openly with Koizumi over France's push to lift an embargo on selling weapons to China, and over which country should host a revolutionary multibillion-dollar nuclear reactor.
Chirac on Sunday defended the lifting of the ban, saying China would not be sold sensitive weapons or technology. But Koizumi stressed Japan's concerns about Beijing's growing military spending.
"We cannot understand the explanations by French president Chirac," Japan's best-selling daily, the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun, said in an editorial.
"The Asia-Pacific region could lose its military balance if advanced technology of the EU were transferred to China. It would be an extremely worrying situation for Japan and the US."
Japan and France are also at loggerheads over which of them should host a multibillion-dollar nuclear project, the international thermonuclear experimental reactor, which is meant to develop inexhaustible clean energy by emulating the sun's nuclear fusion.
With talks deadlocked and the EU threatening to go it alone, Chirac said he hoped an agreement "can be found quickly".