Tens of thousands of ONE campaigners wrote President Bush and asked him to come to the World Summit in New York and reiterate support for the Millennium Development Goals. We called on him to forge consensus around a concrete plan to meet the goals by 2015. President Bush endorsed the goals in his speech to the World Summit and pledged America’s leadership.

This is a positive step. In the World Summit’s Outcome Document, the US and over 150 world leaders reaffirmed the commitments on aid and debt that were made at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, but they failed to make progress on making trade work for poor people.

With millions of lives at stake, it is now time to turn ambitious promises into effective action. Much work remains to fulfill commitments the US and world leaders made in the 2000 Millennium Declaration, at last July’s G8 Summit and in the last two days, at the World Summit, for more and better international assistance, debt cancellation and trade reform. Real progress in the fight against extreme poverty and global AIDS will depend on taking the momentum from these historic agreements to the next level. This means implementation of the debt deal at the upcoming Annual Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Congress fully funding the President’s commitments on aid and real progress on trade reform at the December meeting of the World Trade Organization.

ONE will be watching, continuing to call on our leaders to seize this historic opportunity to partner with poor nations to better the lives of all of their people.