Fukuda to meet Bono, Bill Gates, Matt Damon, to lure them to Africa conference

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is planning to meet U2 rock singer Bono, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Hollywood actor Matt Damon on the sidelines of a major conference in Switzerland later this month to make a personal pitch for their attendance at an African development conference in Japan in May, a government source said Sunday.
The Japanese government has invited Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate from Kenya, to the conference and is also sounding out American actress Angelina Jolie, a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the source said. Bono, a well-known anti-poverty campaigner, and a few other people are understood to have expressed an interest in attending the Tokyo International Conference on African Development to be held in Yokohama, the source said.