| Author |
Message |
    
Libralind2
Veteran Poster
Username: Libralind2
Post Number: 631
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 03:26 pm: | 
|
US to cancel Liberia's debt
by David DieudonneTue Feb 13, 4:37 PM ET
The United States boosted the fledgling recovery of Liberia by announcing it was erasing the war-ravaged West African nation's debt.
Speaking at the start of a two-day conference of Liberia's donors here, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice noted the United States holds 391 million dollars in outstanding bilateral loans to Liberia.
"We will cancel that debt, all of it," she said.
"We hope that this will help to relieve Liberia's crippling debt burden, a debt burden that today's leadership and today's people of Liberia do not deserve," Rice said.
European Union aid commissioner Louis Michel said he had "heard" appeals for foreign help from Liberia's new elected president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, but made no promises on debt relief.
Liberia labors under 3.7 billion dollars in debt run up by former warlord leaders such as Charles Taylor, who is now on trial at a UN-backed court in The Hague for alleged war crimes.
The debt burden comes to 800 percent of its meager economic output, and Sirleaf has appealed in particular for relief from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and African Development Bank.
Campaigners say Liberia owes about 1.5 billion dollars in repayment arrears to the IMF and World Bank alone. The country cannot qualify for formal debt cancellation from the global lenders until it pays off those arrears.
The institutions say they cannot legally act unless major donors, like the Group of Seven powers, stump up the cash to pay off Liberia's arrears themselves.
World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz said at the conference: "This past weekend at the G7 (in Germany), I urged finance ministers to commit the needed resources to clear Liberia's arrears to the three sister institutions.
"We have a window of opportunity to help bring hope to a country that has seen too much war and suffering," he said.
Diamond-rich Liberia went through a savage 14-year civil war that killed an estimated 270,000 people and devastated its infrastructure until Taylor went into exile in 2003.
Sirleaf, who took office last year as Africa's first elected female president, was to take her message to the White House on Wednesday in a meeting with President George W. Bush.
The Harvard-educated former World Bank economist already enjoys star status in Washington, having been one of the few foreign dignitaries granted the honor of an address before the US Congress, in March 2006.
In her first year in office, Sirleaf has set up a South African-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission charged with probing atrocities committed during the 1989-2003 civil war.
She has overseen the return of electricity to parts of the capital, Monrovia, and waged a war on official corruption that has drawn praise from donors.
Two weeks ago, Chinese President Hu Jintao revealed during a visit to Liberia that Beijing would cancel its own bilateral debt of 15 million dollars. Liberia switched diplomatic ties from Taiwan to Beijing three years ago.
But other foreign donors have already tied any aid to the West African country to stringent conditions under an assistance plan aimed at curbing the hemorrhaging of state funds.
Sirleaf said that ordinary Liberians do not care about the arcane details of donor conferences.
"All they know is they want a job to be able to feed their family, they want to be able to send their children to school, they want to be able to take their products to market," she said in Washington Monday.
"So our message to the partners is yes, we understand all these requirements, we know they have to be met, but can we find a way to short-circuit it?"
|
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 3491
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 03:41 pm: |
|
Great. Now if China would be so kind as to cancel the debt of the U.S. perhaps some of our own problems will be diminished. |
Yukio
Veteran Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1806
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 03:42 pm: |
|
mzuri: thats funny.
the US needs to cancel Liberia debt, since it has been a US satelite since the 19th c. |
Latina_wi
Regular Poster
Username: Latina_wi
Post Number: 118
Registered: 08-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 - 09:00 am: |
|
That was a great thing for the US government to have done. |
Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 4494
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 - 01:44 pm: |
|
Goddamn nigggerrrs are hating on Africans - Mostly Dark-Skinned Blacks.
|
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 3665
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, February 17, 2007 - 11:09 am: |
|
I suppose you have not heard about the scam. The developed nations cancel the poor nations debt. These guys called Vultures buy up the debt for pennies on the dollar (how they do this when it is supposedly cancelled I don't know).
They sue in court to collect it. They collect it out of billions of dollars US taxpayers have put up for AFrican debt relief, development, etc.
What the right hand giveth the left hand taketh away. |
|
Email This Page