Debt relief struggle to continue beyond G-8 summit in Genoa

By Ashley Seager

LONDON (Reuters): As the short-term successor group to the highly successful Jubilee 2000 debt relief campaign prepares to bow out after this weekend's G-8 summit in Genoa, its leader remains distinctly upbeat.

Not only will the struggle for a better deal for the world's poor carry on, but there is good reason to hope for another breakthrough on the debt issue within the next few months, Drop the Debt director Adrian Lovett told Reuters.

Drop the Debt was set up to carry forward to Genoa the momentum built up by Jubilee 2000 ahead of the millennium.

Jubilee 2000 pushed debt relief to the top of the international agenda, but did not achieve its aim of a complete write-off of the debts of the world's poorest countries.

"Drop the Debt was designed as a short-life, focussed thing because we tried to recapture the remaining millennium momentum that Jubilee 2000 stirred up and milk the last drips out of it," Lovett told Reuters in an interview.

Lovett was deputy to Jubilee 2000's charismatic leader Ann Pettifor and set up Drop the Debt, maintaining the support of rock stars Bono and Bob Geldof, whose backing has been key. The group has not achieved a major new breakthrough, but has been worthwhile nevertheless, he said.

"If we had not carried on, the whole process could easily have gone backwards from where we were at the end of last year.

"We have seen more countries come into the debt relief process and we have very much raised this whole question of whether the IMF and World Bank could do more and indeed whether what's being done is actually leaving countries in a sustainable position."

There are now 23 of the world's poorest countries in the so- called Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative which aims to reduce countries' debts to a sustainable level.

The Group of Seven rich countries -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States -- have written off the bilateral debts owed to them as a result of the campaign but multilateral creditors such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have not yet moved as far.

Countries in the HIPC process -- most of which are in sub- Saharan Africa -- have on average seen their actual debt payments so far fall by less than a third. That is a significant victory for debt campaigners but not enough.

"We cannot say we are satisfied. We feel very proud of what we have achieved and we have given a lot of people a new sense of what is possible when movements of ordinary people come together in this way," said Lovett.

"But what has been particularly tough has been getting the job finished. It is easy to start things but much harder to get to the end of the process."

Lovett stressed that while Drop the Debt was closing its doors, it had only been a small umbrella group for all the global charities and church groups such as Oxfam, Christian Aid, CAFOD and others who always had and will continue to campaign on debt issues.

"So the pressure will be kept up although I don't think anyone can pretend it is still the year 2000 when there was something extraordinary around this campaign because everyone from the Pope downwards was saying do this for the millennium."

Although Drop the Debt has been calling for another big move from the G-8 (the G-7 plus Russia) this weekend, Lovett admitted he was worried a breakthrough -- which would involve the G-8 instructing the IMF and World Bank to move to 100 percent debt write-off -- was unlikely.

"There is a fatigue among the G-8 around this issue. That is simply because they have talked about it before. That's a real danger for the G-8 -- they get into this cycle of announcing new initiatives and completing none of them," said Lovett.

But, he continued, debt campaigners in the United States had found a groundswell of support in the new administration of President George W. Bush.

"In the U.S. they have really got a ball rolling. There is a lot of interest in Congress and the White House and U.S. Treasury in getting the IMF and World Bank to write off debt owed to them. They are very hopeful of a breakthrough in the next few months."

Bush this week urged the World Bank and other development banks to make up to 50 percent of their cash disbursements to poor countries as grants rather than loans. That, he said, "does not merely drop the debt, it helps stop the debt".

But for the next few days at least, all Lovett's attention will be focussed on getting Drop the Debt's message across at Genoa without being associated with the violent protests that have become the norm at such international gatherings and are expected this time round.

"Violence is not only morally unacceptable but tactically unacceptable because it diverts attention from the interests of the poorest people in the world that we and other groups are trying to raise," he said.

He admitted it has become increasingly difficult to get the debt message through clearly.

"As long as the media can get photos of anarchists bashing policemen, that is going to be difficult for us to compete with."

After Genoa, Lovett will join Oxfam as its head of campaigns and communications. "So I will certainly not be giving up on debt," he grinned.