US to cancel Liberia debt, urges others to follow (Reuters)

[Eugene]

US to cancel Liberia debt, urges others to follow
13 Feb 2007 18:26:39 GMT
Source: Reuters

-snip-

By Sue Pleming and Lesley Wroughton

WASHINGTON, Feb 13 (Reuters) - The United States pledged to cancel $391 million in
outstanding debt owed by Liberia, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on
Tuesday, urging others to help the West African nation recover from conflict.

"We will cancel that debt, all of it, under the framework for highly indebted countries,"
Rice told a donors conference on Liberia held at the World Bank in Washington.

"We hope that this will help to relieve Liberia's crippling debt burden, a debt burden
that today's leadership do not deserve," she said.

An on-off conflict from 1989 to 2003 devastated the once prosperous country, wrecking
infrastructure and leaving more than 200,000 dead. Its foreign debt is estimated at about
$3.7 billion, half of which is accrued interest.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N13172609.htm

[Turbineguy]

1. There's an idea!

maybe we can get all those other countries to forgive our debt?

[peacetalksforall]

2. Doesn't it make you think that some of the torture prisons are in

Liberia - or maybe this is the country that is going to give Bush his African soldiers that he talked about in a speech last year.

If you hear that there is a major training program going on there - this may be where the next National Guard is coming from - a group that can morph into prison guards for dissentors on American soil.

How would a scriptwriter frame it - given the clues that are the basis of a script?

Is Liberia one of the countries that Pat Robertson flies to? Are their gold mines there?

[jwirr]

3. Debt forgiveness is one of the goals of Al Gore but if *ss is doing

it I assume there is something else going on here. Do they have oil?

[On the Road]

4. That is Excellent

I am so glad the debt relief meme has finally risen into the power structure so that even the Bush administration is doing things like this.

Now, the $391 that the US cancelled is only 11% of the total debt. That limits the impact. But it's still the right thing to do.