Christian Aid has reacted to comments made by the Conservative Party leadership contender David Cameron regarding one of the aid agency’s trade justice campaign posters.

|PIC1|Cameron’s attack came against one poster that compared the deaths caused by poverty to those caused by the tsunami, suggesting that it was helpful to foster what he called “Britain’s cultural hostility to capitalism”.

The Tory Witney MP said, “For too many people, profit and free trade are dirty words ... We need to campaign for capitalism, to promote profit, to fight for free trade, to remind, indeed educate, our citizens about the facts of economic life.”

The controversial comments came at an event organised by the Centre for Policy Studies think tank, where the MP said that developing countries needed support if they would ever be able to capture the opportunity of free trade.

Cameron said, “With such support we can help entrench market economics in poor countries, and lay the groundwork for growth and poverty elimination. For too many people, profit and free trade are dirty words. You can see it in the Christian Aid poster that compares free trade to a tsunami.”

|TOP|In response John McGhie, a Christian Aid spokesman commented that Cameron’s words were an “ill-advised jibe”.

McGhie added, “Regrettably it seems that Mr Cameron in the heat of his own leadership struggle has missed the point.

“Christian Aid is not anti-free trade and we have no objection to profit.

“What we do say is that the way that trade rules have been stacked against poorer countries is neither `fair' nor `free' and that developing nations should be entitled to the same measure of protection that developed countries employed on their way to becoming rich.

|AD|The Christian Aid representative told how they had made the comparison with the tsunami to highlight the humbling fact that every three seconds a child somewhere in the world dies needlessly due to poverty-related diseases.

“It would perhaps have been more appropriate for Mr Cameron to have checked with us first before making this ill-advised gibe. We would welcome a meeting with him soon to discuss world trade – whether or not he wins the leadership race,” McGhie continued.

Earlier this week, Daleep Mukarji, the Christian Aid director sent Cameron a letter inviting the MP to a meeting so that he could be briefed more accurately on the agency’s trade policy.

McGhie concluded, “We have a long history of engagement with the Conservative Party and we look forward to continuing this with Mr Cameron.”

At the start of this month more than 8,000 campaigners from across the UK united in Westminster to challenge Prime Minister Tony Blair and highlight to him the generations of people across the world who are continuing to live in poverty until his promise to bring about trade justice are fulfilled.

The lobby, the largest lobby of the UK Parliament this year, was part of a mobilisation of hundreds of millions of people across the globe who are demanding that Prime Minister Tony Blair and other world leaders bring about a radical change to the way world trade is currently governed, and for a new system to be created which also benefits poor people and the environment, and not just the richer more powerful nations.

The huge campaign was timed to add pressure to a gathering of Trade Ministers from the 25 EU nations on 21st-22nd November meeting for the last time to finalise the EU’s negotiating position for the crucial trade talks at the WTO in Hong Kong in December.