BRASILIA, Brazil, Jan. 17 (UPI) -- Brazil's president is trying to rally international support for a "check tax" to help end global hunger, Brazilian news sources reported Saturday.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will reportedly take the idea to a meeting in Geneva at the end of the month and present it to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and French President Jacque Chirac.
"There is a group proposal for an international fund to combat hunger and we are studying the possibility of creating a tax" to do that, said President Lula's foreign advisor Marco Aurelio Garcia.
The international tax proposal is similar to Brazil's own check tax, a tariff on transactions that goes toward funding social projects.
Lula has already suggested on several occasions -- the most recent being last week's Summit of the Americas in Mexico -- for an international hunger-eradication program like the one he started for Brazil last year.
The center-left Brazilian leader also presented his check tax proposal to World Bank President James Wolfensohn earlier this week.
