In December, I attended the World Council of Churches Assembly meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe, where Christians from around the world came together to pray and worship and to talk about the issues of faith which confront us in this world. The issue of the enormous global debt, which is threatening the very survival of the world’s poorest nations, was at the heart of our deliberations.

Indeed, these leaders of Protestant and Orthodox churches around the world joined the call for Jubilee 2000, the cancellation of all debts of the world’s poorest nations, which had already been endorsed by Pope John Paul VI and the bishops and archbishops of the worldwide Anglican communion. It’s been a long time since the leaders of the Christian faith all agree on any issue, but they all agree that it is sinful for the rich to take from the poor.

What has brought them to this position is the realization that the world’s poorest nations now owe somewhere between $127-$250 billion, depending on how one counts. Thus, Zimbabwe, where our meeting was taking place and which has the world’s highest death rate from HIV/AIDS, pays 37 percent of its Gross National Product to the repayment of the interest alone on the debt they owe. Precious dollars which might go to AIDS prevention and treatment must be shuttled instead to debt repayment and the same is true for other services to the people, including education and farm subsidies and assistance. This is true despite the high taxation rate of 40-45 percent which Zimbabweans now pay.

Indeed, some African nations spend four times as much servicing debt each year as they do on health care for citizens. And according to figures released by Jubilee 2000, for every dollar given in development aid to these poor nations, three dollars goes back to rich countries in debt-service payments.

The irony of all this is that many of these poor nations have provided free or very low-cost resources to the developed world and now are being forced to pay for the goods and services it helped create. At the World Council of Churches meeting, for example, we were reminded by one African church leader that millions of people were stolen from Africa to provide free labor for the world, and such natural resources as gold, oil, diamonds, and many metals were stripped from African countries for a small portion of their value. "When you count all of that, we don’t owe you anything," he said pointedly.

Now, at the latest so-called G7 meeting of the leaders of the industrialized nations, there was a call for the forgiveness of some of the debt burden of the world’s poorest countries. Their estimates of their proposal would provide $65-90 billion in debt relief for some 33 countries, most of which would be in Africa. Their rationale for the less-than-total debt relief is that total cancellation would require enormous budgetary outlays by the G7 countries. But some economists argue that the total debt could be canceled at little budgetary cost to the United States and other creditor countries and would pose no fundamental risks to international financial institutions or commercial banks.

The reality is that the huge debt is unpayable and all the richest nations are doing is extracting interest payments on loans they know cannot be repaid. Moreover, according to Oxfam, one of the world’s food programs, even with these new measures a country like Mozambique would be paying twice as much a year for debt payments as for primary education.

According to Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs, the G7 initiative is simply "tinkering around the edge," and it does not get rid of the debt, or free up needed resources for health and education in poor countries and leaves the International Monetary Fund in control of the economies of the indebted nations. Clearly, this is one case where a partial solution does not solve the problem.

Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney is now preparing to introduce legislation which would cancel one kind of international debt, bilateral debt, or loans between the poorest nations to the United States and would require the IMF to do the same as a condition for its receiving U.S. funds. More than a dozen members of Congress have agreed to co-sponsor this legislation, but many more are needed.

I don’t pretend to be an economist. But, for me, the richest nations’ proposal to forgive some of the debt just isn’t enough. We must cancel all of the debt. The rich cannot with good conscience or in faith, take money from the poor. Especially when the poor have already given so much.

There are not many slates which can be washed clean, but this is one of them which can be. Let’s start the new millennium with a truly clean slate for the world’s poor. What greater act of faith could there be?