President Clinton proposed yesterday that international creditors move quickly to forgive $70 billion in debt for poor countries, many of them in Africa, in exchange for economic reforms.
"Our goal is to ensure that no country committed to fundamental reform is left with a debt burden that keeps it from meeting its people's basic human needs and spurring growth," Mr Clinton said.
A year after his unprecedented tour of sub-Saharan Africa, Mr Clinton addressed delegates from 46 African countries at the State Department to launch a three-day US-Africa ministerial meeting that Washington hopes will provide tangible evidence of growing US-African ties.
President Clinton said the United States was committed to a strong partnership with a continent long ignored by the developed world. "This is truly a relationship for the long haul," Mr Clinton said. "We have been too separate and too unequal. We must end that by building a better common future."
He also took the opportunity to appeal to Congress to pass the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, which would provide African nations with more access to US markets for their products. The administration in 1998 was unable to win approval for the measure, which died in the Senate under opposition from the textile industry.
"There are many friends of Africa in Congress and many strong opinions about how best to help Africa. I hope they will quickly find consensus. We cannot afford a house divided. Africa needs action now," Mr Clinton said.
His proposal for $70 billion in debt relief would more than triple, to about $100 billion, the amount of debt that could qualify for forgiveness under the World Bank's programme for highly indebted poor countries, many of which are in Africa and Latin America. At this point about $30 billion in debt could be forgiven under the programme.
The plan would reduce the bilateral debt poor countries owe the United States by as much as $3 billion. Separately Mr Clinton has also asked Congress to approve for the 2000 budget $237 million for Africa debt relief on top of the $245 million covered in this year's budget.
Mr Clinton called for improvements to the Highly Indebted Poor Countries' programme when the world's seven largest industrial nations meet in June in Cologne, Germany.
He called for "complete forgiveness" of bilateral concessional loans, rather than rescheduling as is done at present, and forgiveness of up to 90 per cent of bilateral non-concessional debt.
He said Washington would support gold sales by the IMF to do its part and additional contributions by the United States and other countries to the World Bank's Trust Fund to help meet the cost of the initiative.
Mr Clinton also called for early cash flow relief by the international financial institutions in conjunction with ongoing forgiveness of cash flows by the Paris Club of creditor nations.
Aid organisations and charities welcomed the initiative.