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DANIEL ZWERDLING, host:
It's hard enough to help the people in one state, like North Carolina, deal with this flood. So imagine what it would be like if you had to figure out how to help the 50 poorest countries overcome the disasters they face every day, like floods and famine and civil war. That's one of the dilemmas that the world's financial leaders are tackling this weekend. They've gathered at the annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund here in Washington DC. They're expected to endorse a plan that'll basically tell the world's poorest nations, `We've decided to help you by forgiving some of your debts. You don't have to pay back some of those hundreds of billions of dollars you've borrowed to try to climb out of your economic ruts.' The question is: Just how much of those debts are the World Bank and IMF willing to write off?
An economist named Jeffrey Sachs is urging international leaders to be generous. Sachs runs the Center for International Development at Harvard University and he's part of an international campaign for debt relief called Jubilee 2000.
MR. JEFFREY SACHS (CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT): Jubilee is a biblical concept from Leviticus, in the Old Testament, which says that based on the idea that one in every seven days is a day of rest and one in every seven years is a year of rest for the land, one in every seven times seven years should be an opportunity for a fresh start for the poorest of the poor. So the slaves and the bonded labor are to be released and the debts are to be canceled of the poorest to allow them a fresh start; so in Leviticus, this concept was for every 50 years. Now in Jubilee 2000, the leaders are saying, `We don't know about every 50 years, but how about once in a millennium?' Isn't this a moment with the most incredible wealth in the rich countries; isn't this a time that the richest of the rich can help the poorest of the poor by a dramatic gesture, a moral imperative to release the poorest of the poor from their bondage and let them have a fresh start...