G8 leaders adopt Island Mentality as summit approaches

Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and the world's most powerful politicians are running away to a remote island in the Pacific for their annual G8 summit (July 21 – 23) rather than face peaceful protestors, says a new Jubilee 2000 report published July 3.

Island Mentality accuses the G8 of trying to escape the tens of thousands of Drop the Debt campaigners which have dogged them at their last two summits in Birmingham and Cologne by forming massive human chains around their conference centres. The G8 have chosen Okinawa, a tiny island in Japan, surrounded by shark infested waters.

The reason, explains the report, is that since the promises made by the G8 last year to cancel $100 billion of the debts of the poorest countries, not one country has received debt cancellation. Worse still, the package will take until 2005 to be delivered and even then will fall short of the promised $100 billion.

The report explains how the inaction of the world's leaders on debt comes at a time of unprecedented wealth in the west - Nintendo's predicted earnings from Pokemon products this year in the US alone would be enough to write off the entire debts of both Rwanda and Niger.

Using historical examples from Rwanda to the Falklands, Island Mentality shows that the world's leaders face a critical choice in Okinawa: if they choose to do nothing, the price paid later will be much higher. The alternative is to make up for lost time, to act decisively in Okinawa and finally write off the debts of the poorest countries, giving one billion people a fresh start. The choice could not be clearer.

• Island Mentality is written by Jubilee 2000 Coalition's deputy director, Adrian Lovett. You can read the executive summary and the full text of the report here.

• Mentalité Insulaire - Le sommet d'Okinawa du G8 et l'échec des dirigeants

• Mentalidad Insular