| Daily Press Cuttings |  |
| Daily Press Cuttings | |
FT: Laos: The Central Bank governor and Finance Minister, Cheuang Sombounekhanh and Khamphoui Keoboualapha, were sacked by Khamtay Siphandone, the president. This follows an admission by the bank governor of his failure to combat inflation successfully. The Laotian currency the kip is worth a quarter of what it was in 1996 and shows no sign of recovering. Russia: Economist Martin Wolf criticises the IMF decision to continue lending to Russia, and argues that official debt forgiveness by official creditors would be indefensible. It would, above all, demolish the wise consensus that forgiveness should go only to countries that need and deserve it. Russia's huge wealth and poor performance put it close to bottom of the list on both counts. Nigeria: Letter from Karl Ziegler, director for Accountability and Debt Relief, saying that Nigeria's rejection of an IMF internal bank check is a tragic first break in the anti-corruption regime to which President Obasanjo has committed his government. He says that the government should welcome additional daily monitoring of its good governance procedures.
IHT: World Bank: Article looks at the incompetence of the World Bank's internal payments system, which has left some employees with no pay for more than two months. India: Comment from the US NGO Worldwatch Institute on India's growing population, which has just passed the one billion mark. Article says that this demographic landmark is not a cause for celebration in a country in which half of the adults are illiterate, more than half of all children are undernourished, and one third of the people live below the poverty line. It criticises the government's policy of developing and testing nuclear weapons, and says that it is time for India to re-define its security. The principle threat now may not be military aggression from without but population growth from within.
IHT: Poverty/Debt Relief: Development ministers from the Netherlands, UK, Norway and Germany have written a joint article on the pressing need to eradicate world poverty. The four ministers met recently in Norway and agreed on a 11-point agenda which they will review next year in the Netherlands. They say that the debt relief initiative presented at the G8 Cologne summit is very good news, but depends crucially on sufficient financing and the transformation of debt relief into real poverty reduction. The call for remaining ODA debts to be cancelled and say that “other options include forgiveness of commercial credits on top of multilateral agreements” and additional contributions to the HIPC trust fund. Other points they make are for a concerted attack on corruption and for donors to increase aid levels. Indonesia: At least 20 people have been killed in new unrest in Indonesia's Aceh province, rebels and human rights organisations have said this week. UN/Africa: Civil war, drought and pests have crippled food output in sub-Saharan Africa, where hundreds of thousands of people risk starvation, a UN agency said on Monday. The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation said in a report that 10 million people in 16 countries required emergency aid.
The Voice: Jubilee 2000: Jubilee 2000, the pressure group fighting for developing world debt relief, has won the prestigious Kwame Nkrumah Service award. Jubilee 2000 director Ann Pettifor said: “I'm intensely proud to receive this on behalf of millions of Jubilee 2000 supporters. Ex-Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah recognised racism was rooted in colonialism. today the roots of racism lie in the great distortion in wealth between the few that are very rich in the north and the many that are very poor in the south.”
FT: Gold/IMF: The IMF said yesterday it was trying to raise money for debt relief without selling some of its gold reserves but refused to rule out eventual gold sales if no alternative could be found. One suggested idea is to revalue its gold—now booked at $46.50 an ounce compared with a market price of more than $250. Sierra Leone: FT leader says that the multinational monitoring force that brought peace to Mozambique at a cost of $300 million was money well spent. The west should be ready to find such funding for current conflict countries such as Sierra Leone and Congo.
The Guardian: Russia: President Boris Yeltsin has sacked his current Russian prime minister Mr Stepashin and appointed Mr Vladimir Putin, a former spy, as the new prime minister. Mr Stepashin is the fourth prime minister to be sacked in 17 months. Gold: (Saturday's paper) Letter from Jubilee 2000 UK director Ann Pettifor saying that it is central bank gold sales, not the proposed sale by the IMF that is causing the fall in gold prices: “We in Jubilee 2000 UK are clear: the sale, over time, of small amounts of the IMF's gold reserves will not accelerate the long-standing slide in the price of gold, or the decline of the gold mining industry. It will fund debt cancellation, and in doing so help reduce poverty in the most indebted nations. Central Banks started to sell gold in 1989 – a year before Nelson Mandela's release from jail. It is long-term central bank sales and the exhaustion of gold reefs that have led to a decline in South African gold mining.”
FT: Guyana: Guyana's President Janet Jagan, 78, announced yesterday that she was resigning after 20 months in office because of ill health and named Bharrat Jagdeo, 35, the finance minister, as her successor until the new elections in 2001. Mrs Jagan who suffered a mild heart attack last month and later underwent medical checks in the US said that her resignation would become effective on Wednesday and that Mr Jagdeo would be sworn in on the same day.
The Independent: Sierra Leone: The five-day-old hostage crisis and the mounting danger of attacks in the rural areas of Sierra Leone prompted most aid agencies to withdraw staff from the rebel-held interior of the country yesterday, where they had begun to feed thousands of starving people. The aid agencies fear that their departure after only a short time in rebel-held areas, will prompt a new upsurge in the barbaric attacks because the guerrillas are becoming more desperate as their hunger increases.
IHT: Africa/Diamonds/US: The Clinton administration is considering actions aimed at halting the illicit diamond trade. The flow of uncut diamonds from rebel-held mines to market centres around the world—valued at hundreds of millions of dollars a year—is keeping rebel armies in Angola, Congo and Sierra Leone supplied with tanks and assault rifles, US and European officials say. Africa/ Conflict: Former asst. Secretary of State Chester Crocker says that the US should not only engage with government in Angola and other conflict-stricken African countries, but should also engage with Angola's fragile civil society institutions, the churches, the humanitarian agencies and those autonomous leaders who are now speaking out against the unconscionable behaviour of incumbent elites.
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