have we just witnessed history being made ??

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LONDON, England -- Finance ministers from the world's wealthiest nations have agreed to a historic accord to cancel up to $55 billion worth of debt owed by the world's poorest nations.

The Group of Eight (G8) ministers -- meeting for a second day Saturday in London -- backed a deal that calls for an immediate scrapping of 100 percent of the debt owed by 18 countries.

Those countries -- many in sub-Saharan Africa -- owe about $40 billion to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank.

The G8 ministers also said 20 other countries could be eligible for debt relief if they meet targets for good governance and tackling corruption -- bringing the total package to more than $55 billion

British Finance Minister Gordon Brown called the accord a "new deal" for relations between the rich and the poor countries.

"What we have decided today, conscious of the poverty that we face, is a decision of 100 percent debt cancellation for the poorest countries backed up by greater trade justice, by a doubling of European aid, by a commitment to provide AIDS treatments for people by 2010," said Brown.

Finance ministers from the United States, Britain, Japan, Canada, Russia, Germany, Italy and France agreed to the package ahead of a G8 summit July 6-8 in Gleneagles, Scotland. (Special report).

Hopes of an accord on debt relief were raised Friday with reports of an agreement between the United States and Britain on writing off debt owed by the 18 countries. (Full story)

The countries are Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Honduras, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

Sub-Saharan Africa owe about $68 billion to international lending agencies.

Saturday's accord is aimed at helping countries free up funds used for debt repayment in redirect the money to health care, education and other needs. One of the major issues that these countries face is the AIDS crisis.

"A real milestone has been reached," U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow told reporters. "Lifting the debt burden from the poorest countries in the world brightens their prospects enormously."

Snow added: "This is an achievement of historic proportions."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- current G8 president -- had demanded that poor countries' debts be cancelled and their aid doubled.

The debts would be written off by the lenders in an effort to allow the debtor countries to start fresh, get their books in order and eventually be able to borrow again for economic development, health, education and social programs, rather than simply to repay existing loans.

The G8 ministers discussed other issues Saturday, including concerns about the effect of high oil prices on the global economy, U.S. deficits, reform of Japan's financial sector and poor economic growth in European.

Chinese officials have been included in order for U.S. and European ministers to urge them to the float the yuan, which many see as being overvalued, leading to floods of cheap imports.

Snow is urging his Chinese counterpart Jin Renqing to scrap the yuan's exchange rate peg to the U.S. dollar.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europ...rica/index.html

your thoughts on this .................

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My first reaction is "great!!" I don't know as much about this as I would like, though, and I could see that there might be drawbacks that don't immediately occur to me.

Interested in seeing more perspectives on this one and learning more.

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The amount of money involved, 40 billion dollars, is chump change for these nations. The debtor world needs much more than this.

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Acquiunk wrote:

The amount of money involved, 40 billion dollars, is chump change for these nations. The debtor world needs much more than this.

Agreed, but it's a promising start.

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It needs more, but is there anything bad about this step? Do you think it's camoflauge, oh look at how magnanimous we are <back patting commences> and means they will stop there, when more is needed?

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Sozobe

Todays New York Times article

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/12/international/12debt.html

Finance Chief Cancel Debts of 18 Nations

By ALAN COWELL
The world's wealthiest nations formally agreed today to cancel at least $40 billion worth of debt owed by the world's poorest nations

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i do not want to start a war here but i think its kinda one sided on usa.

most of the poorer countries in the world are poor thanks to france-england-holland-spain-belgium-portugal

ie. the colonial countries.

and they are the ones who should be cancelling the debt, cos its a sort of reparation.

usa never lived of sri lanka's ass or congo's ass or anyones for that matter. yet they are the ones who are more than willing to do their bit to alleviate poverty, a poverty that they never helped to create.

its such a shame for those scavenger colonial countries - i mean just look at the recent tsunami - the affected countries of indonesia, malayasia, sri lanka were all dutch colonies - the dutch lived off their asses for 200+ years and made a mad loot that will last another 200 years from today - and yet in their time of need - the dutch paid not a cent of aid / relief money to the affected nations while usa chipped in with the largest check - some 350 million dollars.

shame on those 6 countries !

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Brahmin, I do not know where you are posting from, but you should note that one of the countries receiving debt relief is Bolivia. I have a bit of experience there and most of Bolivias debt problems can be laid squarely at the door of the US.

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USA colonised Bolivia ??

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brahmin wrote:

USA colonised Bolivia ??

Economically and politically, yes.

The president of Bolivia Carlos Mesa resigned this week after months of protests. He was in office 19 months. He replaced Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada who was "elected" in 2002 and was thrown out of office after riots and a short revolution in 2004. Lozada was born in Chicago, his parents were Bolivian. Spanish is not his native language, he spoke it with an American accent. He ran for the presidency of Bolivia in 2002 and a week before the election the American embassador went on television and gave a speech. In that speech he said directly that if Lozada was not elected the US would cut of all economic aid to Bolivia. Lozada was "elected' in a landslide with 21 percent of the vote (I was there at the time). The Bolivian congress installed him irregardless of the actual vote. He lasted about a year and is now living back in Chicago.

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so the usa string-pulls in the poorer countries...

but to my mind, thats still a lesser offence than to go to another ountry, set up base, and run that country (that country wont have a govt.. instead the colonisers will govern, to suit their economic ends) and systematically suck it dry of her resources....i know cos i am from india... one of the richest countries in the world from big bang to about 1650... oen of the world's very few truely self sufficient countries.... in 200 years flat, the poms sucked us like leeches and reduced a rediculously rich country to one of the poorest on the planet.... and now if they lend money to other countries with the mad loot they made at our (and their other colonies') expanse and then waive a part of that loan... then its not really as magnanimous a gesture as it seems... the money they lent out was ill gotten in the first place... which is not the case for a largely self made country like usa, or a japan or germany.... they sucked & impoverished no country hollow, so far i know.

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Well, slavery would seem to have a place in there -- rather than letting people stay in their own lives in their own countries and work to enrich the colonizers/ masters, America imported the people themselves to work to enrich America.

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i thought it was when usa was itself a colony of england.. though it probably continued well after they declared their independence.... but even then the people back then were still english - the first generation of americans werent yet born.

but

even if usa is as much a colonial coultry as the other 6 i named, they have done more than their fair bit to help alleviate poverty, be it by virtue of the fact that they are the biggest donors to the uno (and probably amenesty and red cross as well) or be it in the fat cheques they come up with during calamities such as this recent tsunami.... which is not what can be said of the "dirty half-dozen".

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Yes, the US was a colony of England -- but then became independent in 1776. Slavery went on for a long time after that, and had a big part in the prosperity of the country.

I wonder if any country is truly self-made in the sense of not having anyone's blood on their hands?

I'm not in the mood to find it so I hope someone who knows off the top of their head will stop by, but there have been discussions here about how while the US gives big checks, per capita (or some other scaling measurement), it's not actually that much better than other countries (and I think maybe worse.)

Anyway, my point isn't that the US is awful, just that it might not be so wonderful in comparison to these other countries as you might think.

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Mugabes' £1m party as millions face starvation

TREVOR GRUNDY

ROBERT Mugabe and his wife Grace are this weekend preparing for a lavish wedding anniversary celebration by approving a guest list that includes the names of African leaders seeking massive debt relief for their impoverished countries.

"It will be a classy, royal-like occasion," a government source said in Harare. "The Mugabes will be driven from a church service at Kutama Mission outside Harare where they were married in August 1996 in an open Rolls-Royce with horses in front. That's how they want it."

The wedding anniversary party will reportedly cost close to £1m. It will be preceded by a Mugabe family trip to an as yet unnamed country with close ties to Zimbabwe - possibly Libya.

Plans for the lavish celebrations in August have been confirmed as millions of Zimbabweans face starvation. This year the country was forced to import millions of tons of grain, most of it corn from neighbouring countries.

The all-day party will be partly paid for by President Mugabe - one of Africa's wealthiest men - partly by impoverished Zimbabwean taxpayers and partly by local companies seeking to stay in business at a time when the words "ethnic cleansing" are never far away from the lips of European, Asian and middle-class African businesspeople.

Grace Mugabe is 40 years younger than her husband. The couple met when President Mugabe was still a married man.

His first wife, Ghanaian-born Sally Mugabe, died in 1992 and 40 days of national mourning was declared. Then rumours started that the austere Catholic-educated Mugabe had been having an affair for years with a State House security operative, Grace Marufa.

Robert Mugabe fathered two children with her - Robert Jnr (now 18) and Bona, who is 16. The children were presented to almost 30,000 wedding guests at the end of August 1996. Since then the couple have had a third child.

They will have a 10th wedding anniversary celebration next year. "It will probably be held at Mugabe's multi-million-pound palace in the suburb of Borrowdale," said a source in the ruling Zanu-PF party.

"This year's anniversary will be huge. Next year's will be colossal," he said.

The father of Prince Harry's girlfriend has defended himself against allegations that his business dealings help "sustain" the Zimbabwean regime.

Wealthy safari operator Charles Davy said he was "in business not politics" after his dealings with Webster Shamu, the minister responsible for policy implementation under President Mugabe, were disclosed.

Davy said his daughter Chelsy's relationship with the Prince had caused a "spate of rubbish" to appear about him in the media.

"I have decided to put the facts on the table in the hope that you will either leave me alone or at least write the truth and limit the adverse impact of all these untruths on my children."

He added: "I am in business with Mr Shamu and have been for five years. We have an excellent and honest business partnership. Why should this change? I am in business not politics."

Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change said yesterday that Davy's involvement with Shamu meant he was "sustaining" the regime.

http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=644632005

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well then what stopped holland from helping the countries it lived off, when the tsunami hit??

i never heard of belgium hepling the congo in any way or any colonial country helping their colonies with a cheque after they made their ill gotten loots.

usa may not be a good samaritan, but has donemore than enough to make up for its mistakes, & surely in comparism to the other 6 leech/scavenger countries i mentioned.

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how does that mugabe report factor into the thread topic?

we were talking loan waivers, reparations and poverty alleviation in general.

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brahmin wrote:

how does that mugabe report factor into the thread topic?

we were talking loan waivers, reparations and poverty alleviation in general.

simply points out that many of the problems and poverty of the african countries is brought on and continued through the corruption of their leaders, many of whom are simply dictators who installed themselves.

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ok.

but still dont get the countries who lived off the asses and mineral resources of these very same african nations, off the hook one bit.

plus poverty begets poverty and a bad govt situation. i mean if these countries hadn't been colonised, squeezed dry and then left to their fates (often after one last parting shot, sort of "finish with a flourish", as the belgians did in the congo), then they would not have slipped into the abysmal depths of mis-governance that they have today.

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brahmin wrote:

ok.

but still dont get the countries who lived off the asses and mineral resources of these very same african nations, off the hook one bit.

nope. i don't think so either.

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have we just witnessed history being made ??

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