PARIS, 18 November 2004 — Official creditors grouped in the Paris Club were to meet here yesterday to discuss a reduction in debt owed by Iraq, a source close to the Club said.
He added that Iraqi Finance Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi was to take part in the discussions. France on Tuesday said it was prepared to make “a significant gesture” on behalf of Iraq.
“We are committed to the goal of securing results at the end of the year,” said spokesman for the French presidency Jerome Bonnafont, recalling that leaders of the Group of Eight last spring agreed that a Paris Club accord on Iraqi debt should be reached before the end of 2004.
France, Russia and Germany support a reduction of half of Iraq’s $120 billion public debt, while the United States and Britain are seeking a 95 percent reduction.
The “vast majority” of Iraq’s debts should be written off, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown’s said on Tuesday in an apparent show of support to Washington in a trans-Atlantic rift over how much of the debt pile to forgive.
“We have said the vast majority of the Iraqi debt should be written off,” Brown told reporters at a European Union finance ministers’ meeting. “But we need to get an agreement from all countries that are owed debt.
“I will be talking to John Snow, the US Treasury Secretary, about this this afternoon,” he added during a briefing at the Brussels meeting. “It will probably be a matter that will have to be raised in the G-7 later.”
Finance ministers from Group of Seven (G-7) industrialized nations will meet in Berlin on Friday at a broader gathering with their other counterparts from the G-20 group of developed and emerging market economies.