Promises alone won't  help poor progress

The world�s richest nations met July 21-23 in Okinawa, Japan and emerged spouting rhetoric about the need to bring globalization to the masses and share more of their wealth with poor countries.

G-8 member-states include Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States and sometimes Russia.

President Clinton called the summit the first where there was a systematic focus on the developing world.

�We must change the reality of millions of people living on one dollar per day and Japan will promote active cooperation with countries outside the G-8,� said Japan�s Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.

The leaders promised more aid to bridge the technical divide between poorer nations and wealthy countries.

Still for all the talk, pomp and circumstance, the leaders failed to give specifics on how developing nations would receive such help.

The lack of specifics and basic problems with education in the developing world left critics saying children in Third World would rather eat than surf the Internet.

Globalization isn�t a magic bullet or a magic wand able to wipe away gross inequality.

For all the talk of free markets and the Internet economy helping to raise incomes, the global economy still benefits the haves more than the have nots.

The other problem is G-8 nations don�t have a good track record when it comes to keeping promises.

Last year, leaders pledged to ease the debt burden on poor nations and little progress has been made.

One non-governmental organization said the summit was a wasted opportunity, and one could add, a lot of wasted words.

Supporters of the Jubilee 2000 debt forgiveness movement say with little progress in Okinawa, debt relief won�t top $15 billion by the end of the year 2000. Last year, the G-8 (or maybe it�s the G-7 1/2 since Russia was excluded from economic discussions) set an immediate target of canceling $100 billion of debt from �Highly Indebted Poor Countries� (HIPC).

Some say Japan isn�t much interested in debt forgiveness and the United States isn�t twisting arms to get substantial debt relief accomplished.

Japan has even offered debt relief through grants, instead of simply writing it off.

It should be remembered that much of this debt was accumulated during the Cold War as the Western world and Eastern bloc fought a proxy war, using dictators and developing nations as pawns. The lenders cared little about where the money went, as long as their pawn did their bidding. Some dictators became adept at offering their services to the highest bidder, quickly going from Marxist to a capitalist, if the price was right.

The donors also turned a blind eye as dictators brutalized their own people, planting seeds of strife that have blossomed throughout Africa.

Meanwhile even Russian President Vladimir Putin�s ballon was somewhat deflated, with his G-7 partners declining to forgive Soviet-era debt. Still Germany agreed to reschedule $3.8 billion in Russian debt.

In the end, G-8 targets for reducing malaria, AIDS, TB and other diseases won�t mean much, if nations spend precious dollars paying back loans, instead of paying for health programs.

Another year has passed, another summit has been held and western promises again ring hollow.