G7 summit
Behind the imperialist 'debt relief' plan
By G.
Dunkel
The leaders of the seven wealthiest, most powerful
imperialist nations of the world met in Cologne, Germany, June
18-20 to discuss the world economy, the U.S./NATO occupation of
Kosovo and relations with Russia.
The nations involved in this so-called Group of 7 summit
were the United States and Canada from North America, Great
Britain, France, Germany and Italy from Europe, and Japan.
The first decision they announced was a plan that sounded
generous: to cut the debt burden of the world's poorest
countries. Samuel R. Berger, President Clinton's national
security adviser, said the debt-relief plan would have "an
enormous impact on poorer countries."
But on June 19, some 20,000 demonstrators, including
delegations from the poorest parts of the world--sub-Saharan
Africa, Latin America and southern Asia--denounced the plan as
a sham and the figures that the G7 used as "incomplete and
partial."
The poorest countries of the world owe $210 billion to
imperialist banks, not $127 billion as the G7 claims, the
protesters said. Their rich resources have been sucked out by
imperialist investors while they have only become poorer in the
process.
As protest leaders used a barge to deliver 17,080,000
signatures on a petition demanding that the debt of the poorest
countries be "annulled," demonstrators linked hands on a bridge
over the Rhine River that flows through Cologne, according to
French television Canal II. The French Press Agency reported
that Jubilee 2000, a coalition of labor unions, religious and
humanitarian groups, called the protest, with financial support
from the Irish rock band U-2.
Jubilee 2000 pointed out that an earlier debt-relief plan,
which the G7 proposed in 1996, involved only two or three
countries. But 40 countries are highly indebted and incapable
of paying off their loans. Furthermore, the Cologne Initiative
was drawn up by the G7 without input from the debtor
countries.
Gene Sperling, head of the White House Economic Policy
Council, used Mozambique as an example of a country that would
benefit from the Cologne Initiative. It would see its debt
service cut from 30 percent of its national income to 15
percent, Sperling said.
Oxfam International, a private relief agency headquartered
in Washington, pointed out that for Mozambique, one of the 10
poorest countries in the world, even 15 percent would mean the
country was paying more money to rich nations than it was
spending to give its children primary education.
Mozambique is desperately poor because of its long history
of colonial oppression and exploitation. It was a Portuguese
colony for 500 years, and the Portuguese, backed by the United
States and NATO, did not leave without a long and destructive
fight.
That was followed by a long and destructive civil war in
which the South African apartheid regime--propped up in many
ways by the United States and Great Britain--funded a contra
group that deliberately tried to destroy all the productive
capacity of Mozambique, from roads and bridges to hoes and
sickles.
The civil war didn't end until well after the apartheid
regime crumbled.
Mozambique is similar to many countries in sub-Saharan
Africa. The total debt of this section of the world is $224
billion, according to the June 17 Christian Science Monitor.
That's 80 percent of the region's gross national product. These
countries spend more on loan repayments than they get in
foreign aid and investments.
Sub-Saharan Africa has suffered from 500 years of
colonialism and slavery. The people there deserve reparations,
not just debt relief.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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