Daily Press Cuttings

Friday 7th April 2000

The Economist: Coverage of the EU/Africa summit in Cairo. For African leaders the vital issue is debt. The poorest continent owes the rest of the world a staggering $375 billion, an amount equal to three-quarters of its GDP and nearly four times its annual exports. Half of its governments pay as much per person in debt service as they spend on health and education combined. Even so, many are falling into arrears. The final summit agreement leaves the central question of debt vague, but this was partly made up for by renewed European promises to consider it.

FT: IMF/Russia: Stanley Fischer, acting managing director of the IMF, yesterday delivered a robust defence of the “Washington consensus”, saying macro-economic stabilisation and structural reforms were essential for achieving sustained and equitable growth in Russia. “After 10 years of experience in over 25 transition economies, the evidence is clear that the basic economic reform and growth strategy recommended by mainstream economist works,” Mr Fischer said at an economic conference in Moscow. Coffee: Coffee producers are entering a critical phase of talks aimed at agreeing a scheme to boost prices by withholding stocks from the world market. Brazil and Columbia have thrown their weight behind the plan, and Association of Coffee Producing Countries (ACPC) say it could be implemented in June. World Trade: Specific proposals by World Bank and IMF officials to extend trade privileges to poor countries have been removed from a report to government ministers, allegedly after pressure from the US trade representative. The original draft of the paper recommended extending duty-free and quota-free market access to all exports from least developed countries and highly indebted poor countries.

Wall Street Journal: US: The US begins a push next week to give Asians a bigger share of votes at the IMF and the World Bank. But Europeans are likely to lose some of their 30% share while the US's share would remain at about 18%. Tunisia: Habib Bourguiba, 96, former president of Tunisia died in Monastir, Tunisia.

IHT: Ethiopia: The UN worked yesterday to establish a second stopgap airlift to drought-stricken Ethiopia, where food supplies are too short for the 4-5 million people it is feeding. UN/AIDS: The 23 million Africans infected with the virus that causes AIDS should be given regular doses of a common and affordable antibiotic to ward off fatal secondary infections, the World Health Organisation and the UN Aids programme say. Cambodia: New York Times leader says that the UN must insist that former Khmer Rouge leaders Ieng Sary, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan must be tried by an internationally-backed tribunal. Without them the process will be a mockery.

The Independent: Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe's parliament voted yesterday to empower the seizure of land from white farmers and make Britain liable for compensating them. However the squatters have decided not to move off the farms and wait for the amendment to be put in practice. The British government in the meantime has dismissed the vote as unenforceable. The President's narrow success in pushing through the amendment came after he lost a referendum in February which proposed the same text. Ethiopia: Only 1% of the food promised by the international community for the famine-hit regions of Ethiopia has actually arrived, according to the government in the capital, Addis Ababa. Sir Bob Geldof described the amount as “measly”. In an editorial Bob Geldof highlights the “notoriously slow and inefficient emergency” response of the European Union.

The Guardian: World Trade: Resumption of global trade talks appear remote following the failure of the latest attempt at compromise. Hopes that concessions to the world's poorest countries will revive the talks were dashed yesterday when it emerged that the big four trading powers have refused to open important areas of their markets. Cuba/EU: The international development secretary, Clare Short, is blocking moves for Cuba to join the Lome Convention and be given preferential access to EU markets. Peru: Article by Mario Vargas Llosa, former presidential candidate in Peru, looks ahead to the weekend elections in Peru, and expresses the hope that on April 9 the Peruvian people vote against President Fujimori and at last begin to climb our of the pit of lies, demagogy, servility and abjection in which they have wallowed since April 1992.

Thursday 6th April 2000

The Guardian: Madagascar/Mozambique: Cyclone Hudah lashed the Mozambique coast with driving rain and high winds yesterday as residents were kept guessing where and when it would come ashore. The cyclone strengthened overnight as it crossed the Mozambique channel after battering Madagascar, where it killed at least 27 people and left about 100 000 homeless.

FT: Angola: Angola has signed a nine-month economic monitoring programme agreement with the IMF which could pave the war for a formal loan agreement by the end of the year. The required economic reforms could have political consequences, threatening influential vested interests that have derailed various reform efforts in the past decade. Apart from a small elite in Luanda, most of Angola's 12 million citizens live in poverty, although the rapidly rising oil production has passed 800 000 barrels per day. UN: Quentin Peel comments on the millennium report of the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan. The report brings out all too graphically how poverty, conflict, disease, malnutrition, illiteracy, misgovernment and human rights abuses are all inextricably linked for literally billions of the world's poor. And behind them all stands the spectre of environmental degradation, which threatens to make the world and increasingly uncomfortable place for rich and poor alike. The article argues that Kofi Annan must capture the attention of a new political generation if he is to address his organisation's failings. Global finance: FT leader says that recovery in the developing world has one draw-back-it takes away pressure for reform. However rosy the outlook now, half-finished domestic reforms leave countries more vulnerable to crises in the future.

The Times: Ethiopia: According to the Ethiopian government 8 million of its people face starvation while the UN says that another 8 million are under threat in Eritrea , Kenya, Somalia Uganda and Djibouti. Only massive levels of aid will avoid the disaster of 1985 where nearly a million died in Ethiopia. Times leader argues that both the United States and Europe have not kept their promises to help the Ethiopian government tackle the famine situation in its early days, as they had done after the 1985 crisis.

Wall Street Journal: IMF: After allegations that Russia and Ukraine misused IMF's loans, the organisation has decided to impose new controls on loans to financially troubled governments. Starting in July, each borrower's central bank will have to publish annual financial statements audited to international standards by outside experts and provide more economic information to IMF officials.

Independent: Zimbabwe/UK/Nigeria: President Olusengun Obasanjo of Nigeria is to mediate between Harare and London in the current crisis. Nigeria: Armed secret servicemen stormed offices of Nigerian paper "This Day" and assaulted employees.

IHT: Africa: Comment from William Pfaff that debt relief and even new money from the international lending agencies, desirable as they might be, are not the solution. What most of Africa needs is years, even generations, of political and social development, in conditions of order. Its countries need to develop civil societies, indispensable to responsible self-government. Indonesia: Indonesia is seeking a rescheduling of $2.1bn in debt by Paris Club and a delayed $400m loan from the IMF.

El Pais: (yesterday's paper) Spain has announced the cancellation of $200m of external debt to Sub Saharan Africa. This represents 14% of Africa's debt to Spain. The government also plans to double aid to Africa over the next 4 years, as well as cancel all of Mozambique's debt.

Wednesday 5th April 2000

FT: HIPC/UK/Jubilee 2000: The UK yesterday called for a new task force to speed up implementation of the HIPC initiative. This was an implicit admission that the HIPC initiative was proceeding too slowly. Campaigning charities such as Jubilee 2000 recently stepped up the pressure on finance and development ministries to push the process forward. UK Chancellor Gordon Brown called for the IMF and the World Bank to establish a HIPC review and implementation group that would identify any reason for delay and act as a single point of contact for ministries, donors and aid agencies. Only five countries out of the eleven originally expected will have qualified for relief by the spring meetings. World Bank officials say that both the process and its financing have contributed to the delay. France: France announced yesterday that it would write off up to $7bn of debts owed to the world's poorest countries by 2004, which will in effect end debt repayments by the poorest countries within three to four years, according to French officials. Japan: Yoshiro Mori, secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is set to be named as Japan's new prime minister today following the sudden illness of current premier Keizo Obuchi. World Bank: During the launch of its annual global development finance report, the World Bank said the financial crises of 1997-1998 were still affecting investment in poor countries as international investors are shunning the capital markets of developing and transition economies. The report endorses certain capital flow controls to insulate emerging market economies against sudden reversals of capital flows. Ethiopia: In Ethiopia and elsewhere in the region, 16 million people are threatened with starvation according to the UN. Peru: Despite some last minute improvements in transparency and fairness, grave suspicions still surround the electoral process.

Wall Street Journal: Madagascar: 100,000 people have been made homeless by Cyclone Hudah.

The Guardian: HIPC/UK: The government urged the World Bank and IMF to appoint a debt trouble-shooter to speed up writing off bad loans to the world's poorest countries. Gordon Brown and Clare Short called for a new joint Bank-Fund taskforce to sharpen the focus of the global effort to give 25 countries a fresh start by the end of the year. Africa: Former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela gives a full interview to the Guardian in which he discusses his relative optimism over Burundi, but pessimism over the lack of progress in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

IHT: Cairo: African leaders won no fresh initiative from the Europeans for relieving their foreign debt, after the EU argued it was better to work harder through existing debt-relief schemes. France announced it would cancel the whole of the bilateral debt owed it by the poorest countries, while Germany said it would write off $350 million in debt owed by nearly 30 countries over the next 3 years. World Bank: The World Bank forecast average growth rates for developing countries of 4.6% in 2000 and 4.8% in 2001-2. Haiti: Article reports on Jean Dominique, the radio journalist and voice for democracy over decades, who was shot dead outside his radio station in Port au Prince. he founded Radio Haiti Inter in the early 1960's, Jean Dominique was among few voices heard pleading for human rights in the subsequent dictatorships. In 1980 his station was shut down and he went into exile in New York, he returned in 1986 following the toppling of Duvalier. He rebuilt the radio station only to have it wrecked by the army after President Aristide was ousted. Mr. Dominique went into exile again and returned in 1994 after the US intervention.

Tuesday 4th April 2000

Reuters: EU/Africa: African leaders have called for sweeping relief of their continent's crippling debt at the start of the first Africa-Europe summit in Cairo. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak opened the landmark dialogue between the 15-nation European Union and the 52-nation Organisation of African Unity with a call for a radical solution to the debt problem, echoed by all African speakers. "Under ... unfavourable external conditions, the African debt crisis has aggravated into unprecedented dimensions while existing mechanisms proved to be either extremely slack or short of easing its burdens," the Egyptian leader said. "We would like to emphasise our conviction of the need to find a radical solution to this problem," he said. The OAU's current president, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, said Africa was "sagging under the weight of a debt which prevents all possibility of improvement", and OAU Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim appealed for "faster, quicker and broader" debt relief.

FT: UN: Kofi Annan yesterday outlined his vision for the world organisation in the 21^st century. He focused on UN's traditional areas of poverty, education and Aids reduction, and urged industrialised nations to relieve HIPC countries of all their debt in return for “demonstrable commitments to poverty”. EU/Africa: Romano Prodi, the current president of the EU commission ,declared that the plight of Africa was essentially Europe's problem because of past links and proximity. The main political message was that Europe cared about Africa though evidently not enough to come up with commitments of new resources. Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe is to send officials to London in an effort to mend damaged ties with the UK, which yesterday said it was prepared to help fund a controversial land reform programme.

IHT: Japan: Political leaders in Japan were preparing to choose a successor to Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, who was in a coma and breathing through an artificial respirator after he was hospitalised on Sunday with a stroke.

The Guardian: UN: The secretary general of the UN, Kofi Annan, set targets for the organisation for the 21^st century yesterday in a wide-ranging speech in which he also called for the reform of the antiquated security council. His 56-page speech was to prepare the ground for a special UN millennium conference in New York from September 6 to 8. It could turn out to be the biggest ever meeting of government leaders: between 130 and are expected to attend. One of the main themes of the speech is to achieve the target of lifting 1 billion people out of extreme poverty by 2015. Environment/India: India is to be shamed by the UN for its failure to save the tiger while corruptly pocketing conservation money and taking no action against poaching. Education: Two page coverage of the right to education. Articles look at the state of education in Angola, South Africa and Iraq. Article from UK prime minister Tony Blair pledging his support for the campaign to boost education in developing countries.

Independent: World Economy: The IMF is to revise up its forecast for world economic growth this year, reflecting the astonishing performance of the US economy.

Wall Street Journal: Indonesia: Indonesian prosecutors interrogated former Indonesian President Suharto in his home about allegations of ill-gotten wealth during his 32-year rule.

Monday 3rd April 2000

FT: HIPC/debt relief: Plans to relieve the debt of the world's poorest countries have hit unexpected hurdles. Money has been a central problem with lack of full funding for the HIPC Trust Fund. The US Administration has struggled to secure funding from Congress for its contribution to the HIPC Trust Fund, Japan is discouraging governments such as those of Ghana and Benin from seeking relief, and officials say that too stringent demands for poverty reduction are also slowing down the process. Today Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the UN, is expected to weigh into the debate with a call for a new approach to debt and development. His intervention should ensure that the issue once more fall s under the spotlight of public attention. Japan: Keizo Obuchi, the Japanese prime minister, has been admitted to hospital with a suspected stroke. Mikio Aoki, the cabinet secretary, has stepped in as acting prime minister. EU/Africa: Leaders of most European Union and African states will meet in Cairo today for their first joint summit, amid concerns that poor preparation will lead to poor results. Senegal: Abdoulaye Wade was sworn in as Senegal's new president at the weekend, ending 40 years of rule by the Socialist party and providing Africa with a rare model for the democratic transfer of power.

The Guardian: Debt relief/Jubilee 2000: Three-quarter page article by Larry Elliott on now HIPC 2 is failing to deliver the broader, faster deeper debt relief promised in Cologne and the Annual Meetings of the IMF and World Bank. Cartoon of UK Chancellor Gordon Brown on a snail, named HIPC 2. As things stand, only 14 countries are likely to qualify for HIPC 2 debt relief this year. Clearly this is nowhere near good enough, and it is now time for the Jubilee 2000 campaign, the churches and the others to help Brown and Short put pressure on the laggards among the G7 later this month. Education: Two page coverage of the right to education campaign in developing countries. The UN's call in Dakar this month for Education for All is the key to ending the poverty and wars bleeding Africa, the poorest continent. Now the promises must be turned into action. Articles look at the situation in Liberia, Sierra Leone and China. Guardian leader says that the situation in Africa is worsening: the key to the continent's development is primary education, and the paper calls on the UK prime minister Tony Blair to provide greater political commitment to making the 2015 targets become reality. Madagascar: Possibly the most powerful cyclone of southern Africa's rainy season was bearing down on Madagascar last night, threatening to compound the destruction from earlier storms. Saturday's paper: Jubilee 2000/UK: Jubilee 2000 wants the UK prime minister Tony Blair to put debt relief on the agenda of the next meeting of the G7 in Japan in June. The campaigners says only five of the eleven countries which were to have had loan burdens reduced by hteis months's meeting of the World Bank and IMF are on target for cuts.

El Pais: EU/Africa: The final revision of the document to be debated at the Afro-European summit in Cairo starting today recognises European commitment to hold a high level meeting to discuss the issue of debt, but gives no details as the Africans had requested. The EU is committed to contribute 1,000m Euros to alleviate the most indebted countries. The European commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Development the Dane, Poul Nielson, said aid must be accompanied by free trade in the continent, creating favourable conditions for investment, regional integration and strengthening its institutions.

IHT: Debt/Africa/EU: African nations looking to former colonial masters at EU -Africa summit in Cairo for debt relief are unlikely to be successful. Africa's external debt has mushroomed 12% a year since 1980 from $110 billion to $350 billion. Europeans were adamant that debt issues be dealt with elsewhere i.e. Paris Club, WB and IMF. 1/2.4.00 Environment/Venezuela: Venezuelan allies of Conservation International ( Petroleos de Venezuela) and the organisation itself are asking the government of Venezuela to consider a debt-for-nature swap, in which money raised from the environmental group's supporters around the world would be used to help retire part of Venezuela's national debt in return for the creation of the 5 million hectare reserve. This would protect the Guyana Shield, the largest unbroken expanse of tropical rain forest running form southern Venezuela across Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.

The Times: Zimbabwe/UK: UK foreign minister, Robin Cook, has made three demands of Zimbabwe: for free and fair elections, halting illegal squatting on white farms and safeguards for peaceful demonstrations. Organisers of the march that was attacked by a mob from President Mugabe's ruling party at the weekend said they were planning 100 days of peace marches and prayer vigils.

Independent: Zimbabwe/EU: Europe is poised to suspend aid package to Zimbabwe. Officials in Brussels have asked 15 EU members to freeze Euro 140 million of aid and trade concessions following concern over the country's civil rights record and violence in Harare on Saturday. Last week the ACP and EU states called for suspension of non-vital aid to Zimbabwe at a meeting in Abuja, Nigeria.

The Observer: Africa: Andrew Marr writes of the west's debt to Africa. It was a our greed that bled a continent dry...now we could kill it with our boredom.