Global Policy Forum

By Charlotte Denny

Gordon Brown and Clare Short are to meet the heads of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington this week to discuss the faltering progress of international efforts to relieve the debts of the world's poorest countries.

In a letter sent to debt campaigners and aid agencies last week, the chancellor and international development secretary outlined their plans to ensure that the flagship debt initiative launched last year by western leaders in Cologne does not disappoint public expectations.

The Group of Eight leading industrialised countries promised that 25 nations would enter the debt relief programme by the end of 2000, but this has already been scaled down to 20. With four months to go until the G8's deadline, only nine have so far begun receiving assistance from the west.

"It is urgent that Britain continues to play its full part in moving forward the international agenda on debt relief," the letter says. "In the coming months we will be working urgently and closely with the IMF and the World Bank to track the progress of the next 11 countries and identify any barriers to their qualification for debt relief." IMF and World Bank staff are in charge of assessing whether countries meet the complex criteria for debt relief.

The programme has come under renewed fire from debt campaigners in recent weeks. They say it is too slow to deliver and too limited, leaving poor countries still paying the west far more than they spend on health and education.

Ms Short said they would be going through the remaining countries one by one with Jim Wolfensohn, the World Bank president, and Horst Kohler, the new managing director of the IMF. "The purpose of our meetings is to keep up the pressure to get the rest of the countries through," she said.

Ms Short said there were serious obstacles to some countries' chances of getting debt relief. Several are embroiled in long-running wars and western creditors are reluctant to write off debts to poor countries spending limited government budgets on arms.

With concern growing in Washington that even the G8's scaled-down target may not be met, Mr Kohler and Mr Wolfensohn met key staff yesterday to discuss the problems with debt initiative. World Bank and IMF insiders blame the G8 for putting pressure on them to speed up debt relief while not relaxing the rigid conditions attached to it.

Debt campaigners were bitterly disappointed that this year's G8 summit in Okinawa failed to provide a more generous deal for the 40 countries that the World Bank and IMF have identified as being seriously in debt to western creditors. Jubilee 2000, the coalition of church and development groups leading the debt campaign, has called on the British government to set an example to other G8 countries by ceasing to take any more payments from the worst affected countries.

Adrian Lovett, Jubilee 2000 deputy director, said: "I hope that Gordon Brown and Clare Short are going to really hammer home the message that there needs to be significant progress on debt."

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