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Action for Justice

International Debt Relief Alert

Please write or call or e-mail

President George Bush comment line phone:
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (202) 456)1111
Washington, DC 20500 fax: (202)456-2461

e-mail:president@whitehouse.gov

Treasury Secretary John Snow Phone: (202) 622-0656
US Treasury Department Fax: (202 622-6415
1500 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20220

MESSAGE: Urge President Bush and Treasury Secretary Snow to fully support a proposal, at the G-7 finance ministers meeting in October, to cancel 100% of the international debt for the poorest countries in the world. This initiative would empower these countries to reduce poverty and AIDS infection.

*The countries participating in the G-7 meetings are: Canada, Framce, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and United States

*Debt cancellation is desperately needed. This year alone, 3 million people in Africa will die due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.Yet countries on the African continent will send an estimated $15 billion in debt service to the IMF((International Monetary Fund), World Bank, and wealthy creditor nations this year.

*In the midst of the AIDS pandemis, African countries are paying more on debt services than on care for their people, an average of $14 per person on debtr service and less that $5 per person on health

*The problem of debt in poor countries not only threatens the well being of their people - it also threatens our own national security. The poor and hungry are more easily enticed by terrorists, and those without hope have more reason to go to war.

CATHOLIC CHURCH POSITION
A fundamental principle of Catholic social teaching is our obligation to care for the least among us. The principle of solidarity, also a key element of Catholic social teaching, reminds us that we are one human family, that we are our brothers' and sisters' keepers whether they live across the street or across the globe.
Because the debt burdens carried by poor countries affect the well-being of the world's poorest people and represent an often overwhelming obstacle to development, the Catholic Church has been a strong proponent of debt belief. Pope John Paul II has called on all the countries of the world to "reduce substantially, if not cancel outright, the international debt which seriously threatens the future of many nations." In A Jubilee Call for Debt Forgiveness, the bishops of the United States joined the Holy Father in calling for debt relief, explaining that the "external debt of the poorest countries is crushing the lives and dignity of vulnerable children, women, and men."