Brown to proceed with aid proposals without the US

Gordon Brown is determined to press ahead with his international finance facility to raise billions of pounds in aid for Africa even if the United States fails to sign up to the plans at next month's G8 summit.

Gordon Brown is determined to press ahead with his international finance facility to raise billions of pounds in aid for Africa even if the United States fails to sign up to the plans at next month's G8 summit.

The Chancellor will not back away from proposals to use the international money markets to ratchet up financial support for the world's poorest countries.

Mr Brown has campaigned for world leaders to double aid - from £28bn to £56bn a year - by signing up to an international finance facility (IFF). The scheme would see countries "lever in" an extra £26bn a year before 2015 by borrowing against long-term pledges of aid.

Tony Blair flies to Washington next week to urge President Bush to join British efforts to increase aid and dramatically boost multilateral debt relief to the poorest nations. Mr Blair will also visit Moscow, Berlin and Paris and have video conferences with Japan and Canada to garner support for the proposals in the run-up to the Gleneagles summit, while Mr Brown will hold talks with European finance ministers next week to lobby for extra aid.

He has won support from France, Italy and Germany, while the Canadians are said to be "sympathetic". But the Government has failed to win support from the United States and Japan, raising fears that the United Nation's millennium development goal of doubling the international community's annual aid contribution before 2015 may not be met.

The IFF is the cornerstone of Britain's plans to cut poverty and disease across the Third World during its presidency of the G8 industrialised nations.

Ministers are confident that a pilot IFF will go ahead to fund a major increase in vaccination, and have high hopes of introducing a wider European scheme to lever in additional aid even if the Americans do not join.

Questioned about the prospects for the IFF last week, however, Mr Brown insisted: "Whatever happens and however many countries join the international finance facility it will be established."

Aid agency workers said a European IFF could still lever in an extra £11bn a year in aid, even if the Americans are not brought on board. "That could still buy a lot of schools and hospitals and would have to be seen as a triumph," said one.

Estimates suggest that every extra £500m in annual aid generated before 2015 could bring 25 million people out of abject poverty.

Clare Short, the former International Development Secretary, warned that efforts to relieve poverty in Africa had to be matched with a drive to end conflict across the war-torn continent. "I feel as though I am living in a fantasy land," Ms Short said. "My fear is there will be all these people wearing the wrist bands and thinking they are helping, when nothing is agreed to stop the killing on the ground, and Africa goes on getting poorer."

She appealed to Mr Blair and George Bush to take firm action on Africa by pressing the UN to establish a "peace enforcement" force in Darfur and other parts of the continent.