Assembly/AU/Decl. 1 (V) Page 4 b) URGE the international community especially the G8 to fully embrace the comprehensive recommendations of the Commission for Africa and act expeditiously on them; c) REQUEST the developed countries and development partners to expedite the process of total debt cancellation for Africa by the year 2007. In this regard we acknowledge the recent proposal from G8 Ministers of Finance with respect to the cancellation of the debt for 14 African countries and encourage them to extend those proposals to all African countries with regard to all components of the external debt; 7. 8. FURTHER URGE the developed countries to improve aid quality through, among others: (i) delinking aid from the trade and geopolitical interests of donors; (ii) better coordination, harmonization operational procedures; (iii) making aid pro-poor; (iv) stronger linkage of aid to the MDGs, the NEPAD programme and the PRSP process; (v) strengthened ownership of aid by African beneficiaries and greater policy space in the utilization of aid; (vi) meeting of the commitment to increase ODA flows to internationally agreed 0.7 percent of GNP with greater predictability; and (vii) reducing the delay between the financial commitment and the effective disbursement. and simplification of aid CALL ON the international community to establish a fair and equitable trading system and to facilitate Africa’s access to their markets, through: a. ensuring that multilateral trade rules provide adequate policy space for achieving MDGs; b. the elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers; c. requesting the Bretton Woods Institutions to streamline their policies and programmes in Africa to be more MDGs-friendly; d. the elimination of trade distorting subsidies and domestic support especially in agricultural sector; e. assistance to African countries to integrate more effectively with the global trading system through increased support for capacity building, environmental conservation, regional integration, cross-border