GENEVA, May 31: Campaigners from across the globe urged the world’s richest nations on Saturday to cancel the multi-billion dollar debt burden they say is pushing millions further into poverty and despair.

As preparations were underway for Sunday’s Group of Eight (G8) summit in the French spa resort of Evian, an alternative meeting in nearby Geneva accused industrialised countries of failing to make good on promises to end the Third World debt crisis.

Famines, floods and the HIV/AIDS crisis are ignored as bodies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank insist on repayments, charged the London-based World Development Movement.

These amount to nearly twice what many poor countries spend on education and more than three times what they spend on health care, it said.

In 1998, 52 of the poorest countries owed $372 billion, of which lenders have only pledged to cancel about $62 billion or about 18 per cent, the WDM added.

The G8 have only chipped away at Third World debt, whilst millions continue to suffer, said flyers handed out at Geneva University by London-based Jubilee Debt Campaign showing the G8 heads of state leaders looking smug and claiming to have “Cracked It”.

Debt relief has held a central place in discussion in G8 meetings over the past five years. But critics say this has translated into little real action to relieve the crushing burden on many developing countries.

War-torn Iraq is facing claims by the G8 and other creditors for the repayment of enormous loans made to now ousted leader Saddam Hussein during the 1980s to finance conflict with Iran, said the Jubilee Iraq group.

It’s the most indebted country in the world, said spokesman Justin Alexander, adding that creditors should prove why the Iraqis should pay back money that was spent on wars and palaces.

The US-based Centre for Strategic International Studies estimates the Iraq debt could be about 383 billion dollars.

Eric Toussaint, president of the Committee for the Cancellation of the Third World Debt, which organised Saturday’s “debt tribunal” at Geneva University, said the only solution was for developing world governments to refuse to pay their debts.

Leaders such as Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who were elected with overwhelming public support, have “all the legitimacy to say to creditors we are not going to pay”, he said.

To applause from the forum, Alejandro Teitelbaum of Argentina, representing the American Association of Democratic Jurists, urged the boycotting of “symbolic products of imperalism” such as Coca Cola. —AFP