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TSUNAMI IMPACT: French Propose Debt Relief

Julio Godoy

PARIS, Jan 4 2005 (IPS) - French President Jacques Chirac has called for a moratorium on repayment of foreign debt for countries hit by the tsunami.

Chirac is urging the ‘Paris Club’, an informal grouping of donor countries, to agree to the moratorium. A declared aim of the ‘club’ is to find "coordinated and sustainable solutions to the payment difficulties experienced by debtor nations." Chirac has offered no details of his plan. But the German government and World Bank chief James Wolfensohn are supporting the proposal.

Wolfensohn said in an interview to a U.S. television channel that "debt relief can be very, very important and that will be part of the needs assessment and the method of financing that we’ll be doing in the coming weeks."

The proposal will be discussed at a donors conference in Indonesian capital Jakarta Thursday.

The French are coming up with imaginative new ways of supporting people hit by the tsunami. Former United Nations representative in Kosovo Bernard Kouchner has proposed a voluntary levy of 0.1percent on all international bank transactions to fund reconstruction.

Kouchner, a former French health minister, praised the show of solidarity around the world. "After the globalisation of suffering comes now the globalisation of solidarity," he said.

But this solidarity would diminish "when the media images of suffering are gone," Kouchner told IPS. "That would be exactly the time when the next urgent phase of reconstruction comes. An insignificant voluntary levy of 0.1 percent on all bank transactions, paid for by the bank clients, should suffice to provide funding for the reconstruction."

The money would be given directly to heads of families in India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and elsewhere in the Indian Ocean region so that people can rebuild their homes, he said. Kouchner, who led the humanitarian organisation Doctors without Borders back in the 1970s added that he had supervised this method of funding relief operations in Kosovo. "It works," he said.

The French government has allocated more than 50 million dollars in direct aid. It has also sent the helicopter carrier Jeanne d’Arc and the frigate Georges Leygues to the Indian Ocean. The warships have medical teams on board.

France is the fourth largest European provider of aid for the disaster areas after Britain, Sweden and Germany. French aid is focused on medical equipment and personnel, food, and equipment to purify water.

Chirac said in a speech to the nation that the tsunami "is also our catastrophe despite the distances." He was referring in part to French victims. Official figures say at least 122 French have died. But several hundred French tourists and others working in the area are missing, and most of them are feared dead.

Chirac was not speaking of the French alone. "We are all one humankind, whose destiny is linked to that of our planet," he said.

Chirac was expressing the mood of the nation. French people are making donations to an extent unseen before. The French Red Cross alone had raised more than 25 million dollars by Monday evening.

French humanitarian organisations had collectively raised more than 40 million dollars by Tuesday morning. Besides, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are sending medical and other aid staff.

In Germany NGOs have collected more than 75 million dollars. Germany is also sending soldiers to Indonesia to set up a centre to treat injured survivors and provide vaccinations.

According to official figures, 60 German citizens have died, but more than 1,000 are still reported missing. "We have to fear the worst," German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said..