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G8 finance ministers look to strike debt relief deal

AFP, London
Top finance officials of the Group of Eight industrialized nations kicked off a meeting here Friday to try to clinch agreement on unprecedented debt relief for the world's poorest countries.
Britain, hosting the talks and next month's G8 summit in its role as chairman of the group this year, was trying to settle differences over how many countries should be entitled to 100 percent multilateral debt relief.
It was also trying to find common ground on how to write off the debt, with the United states reluctant to back European proposals for selling or revaluing gold reserves and introducing fuel taxes for airlines.
"There is a will to come to an agreement," British Chancellor of
the Exchequer Gordon Brown said.
Brown was speaking to BBC radio on Friday as he prepared to meet other finance chiefs and central bankers of the world's richest powers -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United states and Russia.
The finance meeting would attempt to lighten the crippling debt burden under which many impoverished countries are buckling, building enough momentum for a debt relief deal for next month's G8 summit in Gleneagles, scotland.
When they met earlier this week in Washington, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Us President George W. Bush said they were close to completing their proposal for cancelling 100 percent of debt for the world's poorest coun-
tries.
According to the New York Times on Friday, Britain and the United states have agreed on a system to relieve 18 of the world's poorest nations, mostly in Africa, of combined debt worth 16.7 billion dollars (13.66 billion euros).
But German government sources said Thursday that a "definitive agreement" among all G8 members would not be reached this weekend.
Earlier this year, Brown launched the so-called "Marshall Plan" for Africa aimed at wiping out multilateral debt for the poorest nations and at doubling annual development aid to 100 billion dollars by 2015.
Unlike the Us-British plan, France, Germany and Japan were expected to back debt relief for just
five countries, the German source said.
On the subject of how to finance debt relief, Brown said "the American proposal has to be funded like the French, German and Japanese proposal.
"What we've been discussing over the last few days in telephone calls and meetings, is how we can fund the loss of their debt interest payments by the international institutions."
France and Germany have put forward a proposal to tax commercial aviation fuel to raise funds for development in Africa.
And under the Brown-inspired proposal, the IMF could sell a portion of its massive gold reserves to cancel the debt owed.