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Clinton Signs Bill Forgiving Debts of Poor Countries
U.S. President Bill Clinton Monday signed a foreign aid bill that supplies 435 million U.S. dollars to forgive debts of the world's poorest countries.
The measure meets a U.S. commitment toward an international effort to forgive the debts of 33 poor countries that Clinton said were laboring under a "crippling burden of massive debt."
It also authorizes the International Monetary Fund to sell gold "off market" to finance its participation in the initiative.
The international plan, endorsed last year by the Group of Seven major industrial nations, aims to wipe out 90 billion dollars of debt owed by the world's poor debtor nations, reducing the total to about 37 billion dollars.
The relief is given on the condition that the savings are used for projects such as education and health care, and that the recipients refrain from military conflict. Eleven countries had so far met the standards and nine others may qualify by the end of this year, the White House said.
"By lifting the weakest, poorest among us, we lift the rest of us as well," Clinton said.
"It will be good for our economy because it represents an investment in future markets; good for our security because in the long run, it is dangerously destabilizing to have half of the world on the cutting edge of technology while the other half struggles on the bare edge of survival; but most of all, it will be good for our souls because global poverty is an affront and confronting the challenge is simply the right thing to do," he said.
The money was contained in a 14.9-billion-foreign aid bill that also increased military aid for Israel, provided 100 million dollars to the new government in Serbia and 300 million dollars to fight HIV infections and AIDS around the world and lifted a ban on U.S. aid for overseas family-planning groups that advocate or participate in abortions.
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