The sale of at least one billion, and probably two billion, dollars of the world's gold reserves held by the International Monetary Fund was called for by the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Gordon Brown, when he addressed the general assembly of the Church of Scotland yesterday. It was one of the steps needed to remove the burden of unsustainable debt, he said in Edinburgh, a burden imposed by the past on the present that deprived millions of their chance of a future and prevented them breaking out of the vicious circle of poverty, illiteracy and disease.
"I would suggest that our first task is to cut the burden of unpayable debt, and to do so by at least $50 billion in the year 2000," said Mr Brown, himself a son of the manse. "Our second task, to help pay for this, is for all of us to persuade world governments to sell IMF gold. "Our third task is to convert debt relief into poverty relief by increasing aid for health, education, and economic development. And our fourth task, the task for the millennium, is to demand responsibility not just of governments but of citizens that in the year 2000 we dramatically increase our own giving to the neediest of the world."
The Chancellor warned that, because debt reduction, poverty reduction and economic progress must go together, "the billions saved from debt payments must not be wasted on weapons or lost to corruption but must be invested in health, education and economic development".
Agencies add: Thanks in part to campaigning by a church-led coalition called Jubilee 2000 and Oxfam, the issue of debt forgiveness is now on the global agenda.
The IMF has proposed selling some of its gold reserves to pay for debt relief and development aid. From the US to Japan, Britain to Canada, almost every G7 leader has a new proposal for tens of billions of dollars in debt relief.
Africa will be taking its case to next month's G7 meeting in Cologne with real hope for a breakthrough.