Debt Relief for Poor Countries

Re “Democracies to Ease Debt for Poor Nations,” June 19:

Oh, great--now the United States wants to give welfare checks to the whole wide world, in addition to wasting untold billions on foreign aid. That is what debt relief for poor nations amounts to.

Unfortunately, screeching, self-righteous do-gooders such as the millionaire [U2 singer] Bono won’t get stuck with the bill for giving 33 countries a free pass (Calendar, June 19). The chump picking up the tab--with American taxpayer dollars, as usual--will be good old Uncle Sucker.

JAMES DAWSON

Tarzana

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Re “Debt Relief Is Goal for Continent,” Commentary, June 14: Chikondi Mseka calls attention to the inadequacy of the IMF and World Bank’s Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative as a means of resolving the crisis presented by the crushing accumulated debt in 40 nations, where continued payment is requiring a morally unacceptable level of human sacrifice. For three decades the banks have continued to roll over these loans, each time adding the unpaid interest into the original loan until we have reached the present state of disaster where Mozambique, for example, has an annual per capita income of $90 and a per capita debt of $333. The HIPC initiative is an attempt to keep tinkering with debts that need to be canceled outright. Even Mseka’s own proposals fall short of the necessary action: completely forgiving the debt owed by the 40 poorest countries.

The debt these countries owe is about $220 billion, less than one-tenth of the $2.3 trillion all less developed countries owe to other governments, international cartels and private banks. Forgiving this whole amount, as urged by Jubilee 2000, is neither impossible nor unprecedented, as the bankers well know. For officials of the IMF and World Bank to warn of the “moral hazard” of such action is obscene.

I hope people of every faith will join in urging the IMF, World Bank, development banks and other international financial institutions to write off these debts by the end of the year 2000.

LEE SMITH

Culver City